Keffe D Jailed 40 Years for Tupac Shakur’s 1996 Murder

Former American gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for orchestrating the 1996 murder of legendary rapper Tupac Shakur.

The BBC reported on Tuesday that the 63-year-old was sentenced after a jury found him guilty of one count of murder with a deadly weapon in September over the fatal drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Shakur, one of hip-hop’s most influential artists, was shot on September 7, 1996, and died six days later at the age of 25.

Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips street gang, was accused by prosecutors of organising the killing, although he was not alleged to have fired the fatal shots himself.

Prosecutors argued that Davis supplied the firearm used in the attack, while his nephew, Orlando Anderson, was responsible for opening fire on Shakur.

Anderson denied involvement in the killing before his death in an unrelated shooting in 1998.

Davis, who has said he intends to appeal his conviction, was linked to the case partly through his own statements, having repeatedly acknowledged that he was inside the white Cadillac from which the shots were fired.

His statements to investigators and subsequent public accounts of the killing also featured prominently in the prosecution’s case.

In a police interview in 2008 concerning the murder of fellow rapper Christopher Wallace, popularly known as The Notorious B.I.G., Davis disclosed information about his role in Shakur’s killing under an agreement intended to protect him from prosecution.

However, his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend, and subsequent media interviews in which he discussed the incident weakened that protection, allowing prosecutors to introduce the police interview as evidence during his trial.

Davis’ defence team argued that his accounts were fabricated or exaggerated to generate publicity and boost book sales.

Shakur, who sold more than 75 million records worldwide, remains one of the most celebrated figures in rap music, known for his influence on hip-hop and his socially conscious lyrics.

His killing remained one of the United States’ most high-profile unsolved murder cases for nearly three decades, fuelling years of speculation and competing theories about the circumstances surrounding his death.

Davis’ conviction marked the first in the long-running case, bringing a significant development in the decades-old investigation into the rapper’s murder.