Former American gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for his role in the 1996 killing of legendary rapper Tupac Shakur.
Davis, 63, was sentenced on Tuesday after a jury found him guilty of murder with a deadly weapon in September over the fatal shooting in Las Vegas, according to the BBC.
Prosecutors accused Davis of organising the drive-by shooting that killed Shakur on September 7, 1996, although he was not alleged to have fired the fatal shots himself.
The prosecution maintained that Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips street gang, supplied the firearm used in the attack, while his nephew, Orlando Anderson, allegedly opened fire on the rapper.
Anderson denied involvement in the killing before his death in an unrelated shooting in 1998.
Davis has said he intends to appeal his conviction.
During the trial, prosecutors relied partly on Davis’ own accounts of the incident, including his repeated acknowledgements that he was inside the white Cadillac from which the shots were fired.
In a 2008 police interview concerning the killing of fellow rapper Christopher Wallace, popularly known as The Notorious B.I.G., Davis reportedly disclosed information about his involvement in Shakur’s death under an agreement intended to protect him from prosecution.
However, prosecutors later used the interview as evidence after Davis discussed the killing in his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend, and subsequent media interviews, undermining the protection he had previously received.
Davis’ defence team argued that his accounts were exaggerated or fabricated to generate publicity and boost book sales.
Shakur, who was 25 at the time of his death, remains one of hip-hop’s most influential figures, having sold more than 75 million records worldwide.
His killing remained one of the United States’ most prominent unsolved murder cases for nearly three decades, generating widespread speculation about the circumstances surrounding the shooting.
Davis’ conviction marked the first conviction in the long-running case.
