Los Angeles, California - Duane Davis, the former Los Angeles gang leader who boasted in books and interviews of his involvement in the killing of rapper Tupac Shakur, only to deny it when he came to trial, was sentenced to a minimum 40 years in prison on Tuesday.

"You don't get to take a man from his family. You don't get to take his very life, his whole future from him, and just walk away from it. Especially when that man is Tupac Shakur," Judge Carli Kierny told a Las Vegas court as she handed down the 40-years-to-life sentence.

Shakur was a key figure in a hip-hop rivalry pitting the East Coast against the West Coast and was just 25 when he was gunned down in Las Vegas.

A trial heard how Davis, the one-time leader of the South Side Compton Crips, ordered the September 7, 1996 killing of the hip-hop artist after his own nephew had been beaten by members of Shakur's entourage at a Las Vegas casino.

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About two hours after the casino confrontation, the California Love artist was shot by a gunman in a white Cadillac that pulled up at a red light alongside the BMW in which the rapper was riding in the front passenger seat.

Davis handed the gun to someone sitting in the back seat of the Cadillac and ordered that person to shoot Shakur, who died six days later.

Davis is the only person who was in the Cadillac that evening who is still alive.