Former American gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis has been handed a 40-year prison sentence for masterminding the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, according to a BBC report on Tuesday.
A jury convicted Davis in September of one count of murder with a deadly weapon for the drive-by shooting that took the rapper’s life in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996.
The 63-year-old, who has stated he intends to appeal the verdict, was accused by prosecutors of arranging the killing, even though he did not pull the trigger himself.
Prosecutors claimed that Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips street gang, provided the gun used in the shooting and that his nephew, Orlando Anderson, fired at Shakur.
Anderson, who denied any involvement in the killing, died in 1998 in a shooting unrelated to the case.
According to the BBC, Davis’ own statements were a key element of the case. He had repeatedly admitted to being inside the white Cadillac from which the shots were fired.
In a secret police interview in 2008 about the killing of fellow rapper Christopher Wallace, better known as The Notorious B.I.G., Davis revealed details of his role in Shakur’s death under an agreement meant to shield him from prosecution.
Yet his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend, along with later media interviews in which he talked about the killing, weakened that protection, enabling prosecutors to present the police interview as evidence at his trial.
At trial, Davis’ defense team contended that his accounts were made up or exaggerated in order to sell books and gain publicity.
Shakur was 25 at the time of his death and was considered one of hip-hop’s most influential artists. He has sold over 75 million records around the world.
For nearly three decades, his killing stood as one of the United States’ most high-profile unsolved murder cases, generating countless theories about the circumstances of his death.
Davis’ conviction was the first to be secured in the long-running case.
