Keefe D Gets 40 Years To Life For Tupac Shakur’s Murder

Keefe D received 40 years to life in prison Tuesday for his role in Tupac Shakur’s murder, three decades after the Las Vegas shooting that killed the Hip-Hop star.

Judge Carli Kierny handed down the sentence on October 13. Jurors found Duane Keith Davis guilty on August 31 of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon. They reached that verdict against the 63-year-old after less than three hours of deliberation.

At sentencing, prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo argued Davis had tried to profit from the killing and deserved the harshest punishment, The Associated Press reported.

“In my mind he deserves the maximum possible sentence,” DiGiacomo said.

Davis asked the judge to return items police seized from his home, including photographs. Asked whether he wanted to add anything else, he replied, “No I’m good.”

Prosecutors built their case around Davis’s own accounts of the attack. They said he obtained the gun and led the group that sought out Shakur after a fight at the MGM Grand. Shakur and his associates had beaten Davis’s nephew, Orlando Anderson, at the hotel after a boxing match.

The state accused Davis of helping arrange the retaliation and supplying the weapon, rather than firing the shots himself. In his recorded account, Davis said he sat in the Cadillac’s front passenger seat and passed a gun to the back. The car pulled alongside Shakur before shots were fired.

Shakur was riding with Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight when he was shot on September 7, 1996. He died on September 13 at 25. No one was charged with the killing until police arrested Davis in September 2023.

At trial, jurors heard Davis describe the shooting in a 2008 police interview. They also saw footage from “Death Row Chronicles,” the documentary series released in 2018, and prosecutors used his 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend.”

Defense attorney Michael Sanft argued those stories were unreliable and designed to make money, citing changes in what Davis said. Davis did not take the witness stand, so the jury heard his earlier recorded statements rather than live testimony.

Sanft also challenged the conditions at the crime scene, arguing Davis could not have seen Shakur in the dark as his account suggested.

Prosecutors pointed to hotel receipts placing Anderson and others in Las Vegas, along with surveillance footage of the MGM Grand beating, as evidence beyond Davis’s statements.

Documentary director Mario Diaz testified that Davis’s interviews were not scripted or coached, disputing the defense’s claim that Davis had been fed his lines.

The trial also brought renewed attention to Davis’s claim in his 2008 police interview that Sean “Diddy” Combs offered $1 million to have Shakur and Knight killed. Combs repeatedly denied involvement, including in a statement to AllHipHop.

After the verdict, Davis took back that claim in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter and denied that Combs had made the offer. Combs has not been charged in the killing.

Sanft said Tuesday he planned to appeal and argued prosecutors waited too long to bring the case.