Duane "Keffe D" Davis, a former Los Angeles gang leader, was sentenced on Tuesday to 40 years to life in prison for orchestrating the 1996 drive-by shooting death of rap icon Tupac Shakur. The sentencing in Las Vegas caps the lone prosecution of a long-unsolved murder that shaped the golden age of rap music.
Davis was convicted by a jury in late August of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon. The court found that Davis obtained a gun and pursued the rapper, who was only 25 at the time, in a violent act of revenge. The killing took place off the Las Vegas Strip and was a key event in a hip-hop rivalry that pitted the East Coast against the West Coast.
Although Davis had previously boasted of his involvement in books and interviews, he denied the charges when he came to trial. During the sentencing, Judge Carli Kierny addressed his claims of moving on and becoming a grandfather, stating, "You don’t get to take a man from his family … and just walk away from it."