Tupac murder: Duane Davis gets at least 40 years

Duane “Keffe D” Davis, a former Los Angeles gang leader, was sentenced on Tuesday to a minimum of 40 years in prison for the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.

The sentence was handed down in a Las Vegas courtroom three decades after Shakur was shot in the city. Davis, 63, had for years spoken publicly about involvement in the killing but denied it when he went to trial.

Judge Carli Kierny told Davis that he could not “take a man from his family” and “just walk away from it”, especially when that man was Shakur.

A trial heard that Davis ordered the September 7, 1996 killing after his nephew had been beaten by members of Shakur’s entourage at a Las Vegas casino. Shakur was shot about two hours later by a gunman in a white Cadillac that pulled up beside the BMW in which he was riding. He died six days later.

Davis handed the gun to someone in the back seat of the Cadillac and ordered that person to shoot Shakur, the trial heard. The person’s name has not been definitively revealed. Davis is the only person who was in the Cadillac that evening who is still alive.

Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight, who was driving the BMW, was wounded.

Davis offered no words of contrition before sentencing and vowed to appeal the guilty finding.