Duane Davis sentenced to minimum 40 years for Tupac killing

AFP

13 Oct, 2026 07:26 PM2 mins to read

Subscribe to listenAccess to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.Subscribe now

‌

SaveShare this articleCopy LinkEmailFacebookTwitter/XLinkedInReddit

Duane Davis arrives for his sentencing hearing in the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur. Photo / John Locher, POOL, AFP

Duane Davis, the former Los Angeles gang leader who boasted in books and interviews of his involvement in the killing of rapper Tupac Shakur, only to deny it when he came to trial, has been sentenced to a minimum 40 years in prison.

“You don’t get to take a man
from his family. You don’t get to take his very life, his whole future from him, and just walk away from it. Especially when that man is Tupac Shakur,” Judge Carli Kierny told a Las Vegas court as she handed down the 40-years-to-life sentence.

Shakur was a key figure in a hip-hop rivalry pitting the US East Coast against the West Coast and was just 25 when he was gunned down in Las Vegas.

A trial heard how Davis, the one-time leader of the South Side Compton Crips, ordered the September 7, 1996, killing of the hip-hop artist after his own nephew had been beaten by members of Shakur’s entourage at a Las Vegas casino.

About two hours after the casino confrontation, Shakur was shot by a gunman in a white Cadillac that pulled up at a red light alongside the BMW in which the rapper was riding in the front passenger seat.