The court rejects Tory Lanez’s appeal in the Megan Thee Stallion Shooting case, confirming the conviction
Tory Lanez won’t be released from prison anytime soon.
A California court rejected the rapper’s appeal of his guilty conviction after he was charged with shooting Megan Thee Stallion on Wednesday, November 12.
According to AP, a three-judge panel from the California 2nd District Court of Appeal upheld Lanez’s conviction on three felony counts. In December 2022, Lanez was found guilty of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, carrying an unregistered firearm in a car, and firing a handgun with extreme carelessness.
Megan stated during the trial that in July 2020, after leaving a party at Kylie Jenner’s house, Lanez instructed her to dance and shot a revolver at the back of her feet as she was leaving a car she and two other friends were riding in. The “Mamushi” rapper was identified as the shooter by the public after bullet pieces in both of his feet had to be surgically removed.
“Daystar Peterson is innocent,” the Canadian artist’s lawyer begged the justices during oral arguments in the appeal back in August.
The trial was presided over by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Herriford, but this month the appeals court dismissed all of the defense’s errors.
According to Legal Affairs and Trials with Meghann Cuniff, Judge Anne H. Egerton, who authored the opinion for the three appellate justices, stated that the trial judge might permit Megan to respond to inquiries regarding her feelings on the day she testified. She stated in her testimony at the time that “people have a hard time believing you” when a woman makes accusations against a guy, adding, “I didn’t want to say nothing in the first place.”
Egerton attested to the jury’s accurate instruction that such responses can be used to assess credibility.
The judge’s decision to let the prosecution play a recording of a prior police interview with Megan and Lanez’s friend Kelsie Harris, who was there when the shooting occurred, was also upheld by this finding.
Egerton writes, “To say Harris was a reluctant witness once on the stand is an understatement.” “Harris responded that she didn’t remember, couldn’t remember, or didn’t know” to each question.
Additionally, the court ruled that the trial judge could let the jury to view an Instagram comment from Lanez’s account that stated, “That’s not true,” in response to a post claiming Harris had shot Megan. During the trial, his lawyers contended that this was not accurate. Lanez’s attorneys contended that it was impossible to identify the true author of the remark, which they said was discriminatory in a number of ways.
Egerton described it as a “minor issue in the case,” writing that “any error in admitting the Instagram post was harmless.”
Tory Lanez is presently incarcerated at the California Men’s Colony, which is located close to San Luis Obispo, California, for ten years. Following a reported 14 stabbings by a fellow prisoner at California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi, he was transferred to that facility.
