Tupac Shakur murder case: Duane 'Keffe D' Davis gets 40 years in prison

Duane “Keffe D” Davis, who was convicted of staging a murder plot of rap icon Tupac Shakur, sentenced to 40 years of imprisonment on Tuesday, October 13, 2026.

Davis was charged with murdering rapper Tupac Shakur using a deadly weapon to commit murder in a way that was meant to advance the interests of a criminal gang on August 31, 2026.

Davis’s sentence has brought an end to a case that grappled hip-hop fans for three decades.

“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 remarked before handing down the life sentence.

“The world never forgot about him and his death, and neither did Las Vegas. Took us 30 years, but at this time, you are going to face justice for what you did on September 7, 1996,” she said.

Davis has already subtracted 731 days from his sentence because he already spent that long in custody.

Shakur, who was recognised as one of the most influential rappers of all time, was staying in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996, when he was stopped at a red light when a white Cadillac drove up next to him, and shots were fired.

He succumbed to the injuries and died on the scene.

Duane "Keffe D" Davis claimed that the shooting of Tupac Shakur happened as revenge after Suge Knight (Tupac's record label boss) and Shakur's gang assaulted Davis' nephew (Orlando Anderson) hours before the shooting.

The trial continued over several weeks, and the jury took less than three hours of deliberation to reach its verdict on August 31, 2026.