OMM Redaksiyası
Former gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for orchestrating the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, according to Reuters.
A jury found Davis guilty in September of one count of murder with a deadly weapon. Shakur was killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas on 7 September 1996. Davis, 63, has said he will appeal the verdict.
The conviction was the first in a case that had remained unsolved for nearly three decades and attracted widespread interest among hip-hop fans.
Prosecutors argued that Davis organised the group responsible for the shooting, although he did not fire the weapon himself. They said he supplied the gun used by his nephew, Orlando Anderson, who opened fire. Anderson denied involvement in Shakur’s killing and died in an unrelated shooting in 1998.
Evidence included Davis’s repeated public statements that he was inside the white Cadillac from which the shots were fired. He also acknowledged providing the gun in his memoir.
In a secret police interview in 2008, Davis told authorities about his role in Shakur’s death while discussing the killing of fellow rapper Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace. Wallace was shot dead just months after Shakur.
Davis later discussed his role further in his 2019 memoir, “Compton Street Legend”, and in media interviews. Those disclosures voided a protective agreement with authorities that had prevented criminal charges, and a judge later allowed the police interview to be used at trial.
Shakur was 25 and at the height of his career when he was killed. He has sold more than 75 million records worldwide.
During the trial, Davis’s defence team argued that his statements were fabricated or exaggerated to sell books and make money. Prosecutors said he had ordered the shooting and provided the weapon.
