Judge jails Tupac murder organiser after decades without a conviction

Forty years to life for a murder unsolved for three decades

At a Las Vegas hearing on 13 October 2026, Judge Carli Kierny of the Eighth Judicial District Court sentenced Duane Keith Davis, the former gang leader known as "Keffe D", to 40 years to life in prison for the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, imposing two consecutive terms of 20 years to life, one for first-degree murder and one for use of a deadly weapon. He is the first and only person convicted in a case that sat unsolved for nearly three decades.^[1]

Kierny was direct at sentencing. "You don't get to take a man from his family ... and just walk away from it, especially Tupac Shakur," she said.

The night Shakur was shot

Tupac Shakur was shot multiple times in a drive-by near the Las Vegas Strip on 7 September 1996, after attending a Mike Tyson fight that evening.^[2] Shakur died from his wounds six days later, and the case drew intense public scrutiny for years without producing arrests, hampered by tight-lipped witnesses and fading physical evidence.

A Clark County grand jury charged Davis with first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon.^[2] Davis was arrested in September 2023 after investigators moved on evidence accumulated over many years, including his own admissions to law enforcement and to documentary crews about his role in orchestrating the shooting.

How the case was built

A jury found him guilty of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon.

At the sentencing hearing, Shakur's sister Sekyiwa delivered a victim impact statement calling for the maximum sentence, marking a rare moment of legal resolution for a killing that had defined unsolved celebrity murder cases for a generation.