Tory Lanez appeared in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom Tuesday morning (Jun 13) where he learned that he will be sentenced at a later date following his guilty conviction in the Megan Thee Stallion shooting case.
The rapper-singer was due to be sentenced Tuesday, however, his legal team’s request for Superior Court Judge David Herriford to postpone the scheduled sentencing to give them additional time to file a sentencing memorandum was granted, and the date has now been changed to August 7th, 2023.
Meanwhile, prosecutors are asking Judge Herriford to impose a 13-year state prison sentence for the 30-year-old, whose real name is Daystar Peterson.
The judge said no to the defense’s request for a new trial after a heated hearing last month. During the hearing, one of the rapper’s new lawyers, Jose Baez, criticized the way the defense was handled during the original trial, calling it a confusing and poorly managed situation. Baez also claimed that Lanez’s trial attorney, George Mgdesyan, didn’t have sufficient time to get ready for the trial and ultimately let Lanez down.
“The court finds no error, prosecutorial misconduct or newly discovered evidence,” Herriford said. “Motion denied.”
Lanez was found guilty by a jury on December 23, 2022 of three felony charges for shooting and injuring Megan Thee Stallion in both feet in an incident in the Hollywood Hills on July 12, 2020. The charges were: assault with a semiautomatic firearm, having a loaded unregistered firearm in a vehicle, and discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
Lanez, however, has maintained his innocence throughout the case and says he was wrongly convicted.
“Today I take a stance as an innocent Black man, wrongfully convicted of a crime I did not commit,” Lanez said back in April in an Instagram post addressed to Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón.
In an audio recording accompanying the IG post, Lanez said that he “was completely robbed and deprived of a fair trial” and that he watched prosecutors “unlawfully misuse their authority to hide and suppress any and all exculpatory evidence that exonerates me and furthers my innocence.”
“… So, Mr. Gascón, I come to you today as a wrongfully convicted Black man, not asking for sympathy, nor compassion, but for you to simply do what is fair and right in the laws of California, and most importantly in the eyes of God,” he said in the recording, in which he cited the steps that Gascón has taken “in regards to fighting for the justice of Black and Brown minorities.”
Lanez has been in jail since he was ordered to be taken into custody last December just after the jury’s guilty verdict was read, which came after about seven hours of deliberation.
