Michael Sanft, the Las Vegas defense attorney who represented Duane Keith “Keffe D” Davis in the high-profile trial over the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur, was found dead at his home Friday morning. He was 55.
The Clark County Office of the Coroner confirmed Sanft’s death. His cause and manner of death remain pending. A police spokesperson said the death did not appear suspicious. Sanft’s body was discovered at his residence on Friday, November 6.
Sanft served as lead counsel for Davis, the only person ever charged in connection with Shakur’s killing. A jury convicted Davis in late August 2026 of first-degree murder with the use of a deadly weapon for his role in organizing the drive-by shooting that took the rapper’s life on the Las Vegas Strip. In October, Davis, 63, was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison. Sanft had indicated he would appeal and filed a notice of appeal on October 30.
Sanft took the case pro bono after previous counsel withdrew. During the trial, he argued that the prosecution relied heavily on Davis’s own prior statements and that investigators had failed to fully pursue other leads, including ownership of white Cadillacs similar to the vehicle used in the shooting. After the verdict, Sanft publicly expressed disappointment with the jury’s relatively short deliberation and maintained that the defense team had done everything possible. He had described the case as an uphill battle shaped by pretrial rulings.
Colleagues and acquaintances remembered Sanft as a skilled and personable trial lawyer. Marc DiGiacomo, one of the prosecutors in the Davis case, called him “one of the premier defense attorneys in Las Vegas” and said the city had lost both a good lawyer and a friend. A longtime friend, Clark County District Court marshal Michael Sloan, described Sanft as one of the best people he knew and noted that the two often rode motorcycles together. Former client Michele Fiore, whom Sanft represented in a 2024 federal fraud case, said the community had lost a caring and capable attorney.
Sanft was born in 1971 in Haveluloto, Tonga, and raised in a home without electricity that shared a water faucet with neighboring houses. His family moved to San Diego when he was 12. He later served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arizona, attended Brigham Young University–Hawaii (where he performed at the Polynesian Cultural Center), and earned his law degree from BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School in 2001. He was admitted to the Nevada and Utah bars in 2002.
For more than two decades he practiced in Las Vegas, most recently as lead trial attorney at SOS Injury Lawyers. Over the course of his career he tried more than 150 cases to jury verdict and argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He was known for a straightforward, conversational style in court and for taking cases to trial rather than defaulting to plea deals. Super Lawyers recognized him as a top-rated Las Vegas criminal defense attorney in 2025.
Sanft’s death comes less than two months after Davis’s sentencing and while post-conviction proceedings in the Tupac case remain active. Officials have not yet released further details about the circumstances of his passing.
