Las Vegas attorney Michael Sanft, who defended Tupac Shakur’s killer, was found dead at home just days after an appeal, police call it non-suspicious.
The Independent reported that Sanft, 55, was discovered Friday morning inside his Las Vegas home. Police, cited through the Las Vegas Review-Journal, said the death does not appear to be suspicious.
Sanft had represented Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the only person ever charged in the 1996 murder of the rap icon. Just days earlier, Sanft filed an appeal in that case.
Davis, 63, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, was sentenced on Oct. 13 to 40 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder. He faces life without the possibility of parole.
Sanft’s appeal argued that prosecutors waited too long to bring the case. The timing puts the filing only days before his body was found.
After the verdict, Sanft spoke to Fox5 about the defense effort and his firm, SOS Injury.
He told the station:
"We had the best team possible in this case, from the motion practice work on this appeal to our investigator to our firm here at SOS Injury. We all did our part. I don’t see what I could’ve done differently."
No cause of death was released. Authorities have not described the scene beyond the police assessment that it does not appear suspicious.
On the night of Sept. 7, 1996, Shakur was riding in a black BMW with music executive Marion “Suge” Knight when a white Cadillac pulled up at a red light and opened fire. Shakur, then 25, was shot multiple times. He died six days later. Knight survived.
For years the case went uncharged. Davis later discussed his role in media interviews and a 2019 tell-all memoir. He remains the only person ever charged over Shakur’s death.
At sentencing, prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo pressed for the hardest available punishment and told the court Davis was “guaranteed to die” behind bars.
DiGiacomo also said:
"It’s not just about losing a family member,"
And he added:
"In my mind he deserves the maximum possible sentence,"
Shakur’s sister, Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur, nodded in agreement from the gallery as the prosecutor made his case. DiGiacomo argued Davis had tried to profit from the homicide.
Sanft’s death lands against that finished trial record: a guilty verdict, a 40-year sentence with life without parole still in play, a fresh defense appeal, and then the discovery of the lawyer’s body at his Las Vegas home on a Friday morning.
Police have pointed away from foul play. The Independent’s account does not list a medical cause, an autopsy finding, or any criminal investigation beyond that police statement.
Davis’s conviction closed a long public gap between the 1996 shooting and a courtroom result. Sanft’s post-verdict comments framed the defense as fully fought. The appeal he filed challenged the delay in charging the case at all.
Those are the fixed points on the public record. The lawyer is dead at 55. His client is headed into a multi-decade prison term. The murder that made both men part of the same story is nearly 30 years old.
Cold cases do not erase the crime. When someone talks for years about a killing and a jury finally convicts, the sentence is the bill coming due, not a celebrity subplot.
