Judge Carli Kierny tells the 63-year-old he cannot “take a man from his family” and walk away, three decades after the rapper was shot in Las Vegas

Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the former gang leader convicted of orchestrating the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, has been sentenced to 40 years to life in prison.

Judge Carli Kierny handed down the sentence on Tuesday in Las Vegas. It includes a 20-year mandatory enhancement for profiting from the murder. Davis, 63, remains the only person convicted over the killing.

A jury found him guilty on 31 August of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon, after deliberating for about three hours.

Asked whether he had anything to say, Davis replied: “I’m good. I’m gonna appeal this case for sure.”

Before passing sentence, Kierny told him: “You don’t get to take a man from his family.” She added that he could not take a man’s “very life, his whole future” and walk away, “especially when that man is Tupac Shakur.”

What the court heard at the Tupac sentencing

Tupac’s sister, Sekyiwa Shakur, and his stepbrother, Mopreme Shakur, gave impact statements. His stepbrother asked the judge for the longest possible sentence.

Prosecutors argued that Davis did not deserve the minimum, citing his past convictions for other crimes. His lawyer, Michael Sanft, said the defence would appeal the conviction regardless of the sentence.

Rolling Stone reports that the judge rebuked Davis for acknowledging his role in the killing in a BET interview and in his memoir, only to argue later that he had abandoned gang life, become a grandfather and deserved to live out his remaining years in peace.

Backstory: how Tupac was killed in Las Vegas

Tupac was shot on 7 September 1996 near the Las Vegas Strip, after leaving a Mike Tyson boxing match at the MGM Grand. He died six days later at the age of 25. His killing came amid the rivalry between East Coast and West Coast rappers.

Prosecutors said the shooting was retaliation for an attack on Davis’s nephew in the casino lobby earlier that night. Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, was in the car from which the shots were fired, according to Fox News. Prosecutors said the man who first gave him the gun is also dead. Marion “Suge” Knight, who was in Tupac’s vehicle, was wounded.

How the Tupac case went unsolved for decades

For years, nobody was charged. The case moved only after Davis described his involvement himself. He gave a secret police interview in 2008 while seeking leniency in an unrelated narcotics investigation, spoke about the shooting in a BET interview, and wrote about it in his 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend.” His lawyers tried to exclude the memoir from the trial, but the prosecution refused.

He was arrested in September 2023 and has been in custody since. He pleaded not guilty, and prosecutors built much of their case on his own words.