Keffe D sentenced to 40 years to life in Tupac Shakur case
The judge imposed consecutive 20-year terms after a jury convicted Davis of first-degree murder; his attorney plans to appeal.
File photo: Las Vegas Regional Justice Center, photographed October 28, 2006. This is not a photo of the October 13, 2026 sentencing. Coolcaesar · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Resized for display.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis was sentenced in Las Vegas on October 13 to 40 years to life for Tupac Shakur’s 1996 killing. An August jury verdict found Davis guilty of first-degree murder with a deadly-weapon enhancement. Prosecutors argued that Davis organized the attack; the sentence arrives nearly three decades after Shakur was fatally shot in a drive-by.
The sentence and the appeal
Judge Carli Kierny imposed a 20-year term for the murder and a separate 20-year term for the deadly-weapon enhancement, to be served consecutively, The Washington Post reports. That is how the sentence reaches 40 years to life. Davis is 63.
At trial, Davis’s lawyers argued that the state had no physical evidence tying him to the shooting and challenged the credibility of his accounts. Prosecutors presented him as the person who organized the attack. His attorney told the court Davis plans to appeal, so the conviction now moves into the appellate process.
Davis is the only person charged in Shakur’s killing, the Associated Press reports. Shakur was shot on the Las Vegas Strip on September 7, 1996, and died six days later at 25. The sentencing closes the trial phase of the case; it does not resolve the planned appeal.
