LAS VEGAS — Michael Sanft, the defense attorney who represented Duane “Keffe D” Davis in the Tupac Shakur murder trial earlier this year, has died, officials said. He was 55. The attorney had filed an appeal late last month after Davis was found guilty.
According to KVVU, Sanft was first reported dead on Nov. 5 in Las Vegas. The Clark County Coroner’s Office confirmed his passing the following day, the television station reported.
Sanft’s cause of death is pending, the coroner’s office said. Questions to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department were deferred to the coroner’s office, according to KVVU.
BREAKING NEWS: Michael Sanft, the defense attorney who represented Duane “Keffe D” Davis in the Tupac Shakur murder trial, has died, sources tell FOX5. https://t.co/HG5nhGVl99
— FOX5 Las Vegas (@FOX5Vegas) November 6, 2026
No official date was given for his death, according to CNN.
Sanft gained national attention as the attorney for Davis, who was found guilty in August of plotting the 1996 murder of rap legend Tupac Shakur. Sanft had taken on the onetime Compton gangland kingpin’s case pro bono, KTNV reported.
After a three-week trial, jurors deliberated for nearly three hours before finding Davis, 63, guilty of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon, The New York Times reported. He was the only person prosecuted in connection with the Sept. 7, 1996, shooting of Shakur near the Las Vegas Strip, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
One of the prosecutors in the Shakur trial, Binu Palal, said Monday he was saddened by Sanft’s death, CNN reported, calling the attorney a longtime friend.
“Mike was an exceptionally talented trial attorney and a fierce advocate for his clients,” Palal said in a statement to the cable news outlet. “We stood on opposite sides of a highly publicized case, but our professional differences never diminished our friendship or the respect we had for one another.”
His biography with his law firm -- on the SOS Injury Lawyers website -- noted that Sanft grew up on the Pacific island nation of Tonga in a home with no electricity, sharing a water faucet with three other houses. He moved to San Diego when he was 12.
The man convicted of the murder of rap icon Tupac Shakur has formally filed an appeal with the Nevada Supreme Court. Michael Sanft, Duane Davis' attorney, filed the notice of appeal on Oct. 30, a week before Sanft's death. MORE: https://t.co/gKKM3QHgaT https://t.co/S1Qa6URbhS
— KSNV News 3 Las Vegas (@News3LV) November 10, 2026
Davis is appealing his guilty verdict to the Nevada Supreme Court, KSNV reported. Sanft had filed a notice of appeal on Oct. 30, the television station reported, citing a copy of the filing.
Clerk of the Nevada Supreme Court filed the case electronically on Monday, KSNV reported.
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