Key Takeaways
- Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, began serving 40 years to life at Nevada’s High Desert State Prison, and corrections officials released his new mug shot on Oct. 30.
- A jury convicted Davis of first-degree murder after prosecutors argued he helped organize Tupac Shakur’s 1996 drive-by shooting and supplied the gun.
- Davis maintains his innocence, saying, “They got an innocent man sitting in jail,” while his defense argues his accounts of the shooting exaggerated his involvement for financial gain.
Duane "Keffe D" Davis has a new prison mug shot after being transferred to a maximum-security facility to begin serving his sentence for the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur.
According to TMZ, the Nevada Department of Corrections released a new photo of the 63-year-old on Friday (Oct. 30), showing him at High Desert State Prison in Indian Springs, Nevada.
In the photo, Davis appears to have a distressed expression as he begins serving a sentence of 40 years to life behind bars. The image follows an earlier booking photo released on Oct. 14 that showed him with his eyes closed. See the new photo below.
Las Vegas station 8 News Now first reported Davis' transfer Thursday, confirming that he had been moved from a Las Vegas jail to the state prison just weeks after receiving his sentence.
On Oct. 13, Clark County District Court Judge Carli Kierny sentenced Davis to 40 years to life in prison after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon in August.
Jurors took less than three hours to reach their verdict.
During sentencing, Judge Kierny explained that Nevada law in effect at the time of Tupac's killing required an additional, consecutive sentence for the use of a deadly weapon.
Tupac's sister, Sekyiwa Shakur, also addressed the court with a victim impact statement detailing how her brother's death affected their family.
Prosecutors pushed for a sentence beyond the minimum, describing Davis as "the only one who's trying to profit off a killing that he committed."
Davis is the only person ever charged in connection with Tupac's murder, which remained unsolved for nearly three decades.
Prosecutors argued that Davis helped orchestrate the Sept. 7, 1996, drive-by shooting in Las Vegas and supplied the weapon used in the attack. They alleged the shooting was retaliation for an earlier altercation involving Davis' nephew, Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, at the MGM Grand.
Tupac was riding in a BMW with Death Row Records co-founder Suge Knight when a white Cadillac pulled alongside their vehicle and shots were fired.
The rapper died six days later at age 25.
Much of the prosecution's case centered on Davis' previous statements about the shooting, including interviews, documentary appearances, and his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend.
His defense argued that those accounts were exaggerated for financial gain and maintained that prosecutors lacked physical evidence directly connecting him to the shooting.
Davis has continued to deny responsibility for Tupac's death.
Following his conviction, he told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview, "I'm innocent, man. They got an innocent man sitting in jail."
