Duane Davis sentenced to 40 years of jail for Rapper Tupac Shakur’s murder

Advertisement

New Delhi: Duane Davis, the convicted former gang leader who is believed to have paid the gunman to kill rapper Tupac Shakur in 1996, has received a 40-years-to-life sentence from a Las Vegas court.

The verdict was handed down on Tuesday, after nearly three decades since the legendary hip-hop artist was shot dead in a drive-by shooting.

Davis, 63, was previously found guilty of murder in the first degree by using a deadly weapon in August of 2026. He will be in prison for a significant period of time and will only be able to seek parole after a significant period of time.

The prosecutor told the court that Davis had ordered the murder after a fight at the Las Vegas casino that same night where his nephew Orlando Anderson was said to have been beaten by members of the slain rapper’s entourage.

Nearly two hours afterward, a white Cadillac pulled up alongside the BMW carrying Shakur and another gunman began shooting.

Advertisement

The rapper, then aged 25, died in hospital six days after the shooting incident on 7 September.

From the government’s narrative, Davis gave a gun to a passenger in the backseat of the Cadillac and ordered the person to shoot the rapper.

The killing soon turned into one of the most high-profile unsolved murders in music history, amid the ongoing East Coast-West Coast hip-hop beef in the US.

Davis was the lone Cadillac survivor when the case went to trial, and his conviction signals a major milestone in the decades-long manhunt for who killed Shakur.

Also Read: Gujarat man jailed in US for smuggling fentanyl-making chemicals

Advertisement