Rapper Tory Lanez is due in court for a second day, his sentencing hearing for the 2020 shooting of Megan Thee Stallion stretching into Tuesday.
Judge David Herriford had been expected to sentence the 31-year-old Canadian rapper, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, on Monday after several delays at a hearing that often can take only a couple of hours.
However, the proceedings turned into a marathon two-day session after the judge had attorneys for both sides argue each factor of his potential sentence and allowed seven witnesses, including Lanez’s father and the mother of his 6-year-old son, to give statements on behalf of Lanez. Megan also issued a victim impact statement Monday, read by Deputy District Attorney Kathy Ta, stating she “will never be the same.”
Lanez’s sentencing hearing was originally scheduled for January, but was rescheduled when he hired new attorneys and again after his legal team filed a motion for a new trial. The motion was denied in May.
Jury finds Tory Lanez guilty of shooting Megan Thee Stallion in December
Lanez was found guilty of three felonies in December for leaving the rapper wounded with bullet fragments in her feet.
The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for a day and a half before convicting Lanez of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, having a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle and discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
Following months of speculation and publicity surrounding the incident, prosecutors charged Lanez with felony assault in October 2020. Lanez pleaded not guilty in November 2020. The Canadian rapper’s shooting trial began Dec. 12, 2022, more than two years after Megan Thee Stallion accused the R&B artist of inflicting “great bodily injury” toward her. In a criminal complaint, prosecutors said Lanez fired a gun at a victim identified as “Megan P.” after she got out of an SUV during an argument in the Hollywood Hills on July 12, 2020. (Megan’s legal name is Megan Pete.)
Tory Lanez sentencing postponed,Megan Thee Stallion describes mental distress
Prosecutors want Tory Lanez to serve 13 years, defense attorneys push for probation in sentencing memos
On June 6, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón submitted a sentencing memorandum, recommending Lanez be sentenced to 13 years in state prison. The district attorney’s office also cited his “lack of remorse as a basis to deny probation.”
In the 12-page memo, first reported and obtained by reporter Meghann Cuniff, prosecutors wrote, “The defendant has failed to exhibit any remorse, which begs the question whether any of the apologies he directed to the victim in his text message and jail call were genuine and not just driven by an effort to maintain her silence.”
“Except for the jail call admission and his apology text to the victim back in July 2020, the defendant has spent nearly three years since that time waging a campaign of misinformation to re-traumatize the victim,” prosecutors continued.
In the sentencing memorandum, Gascón and Deputy District Attorneys Kathy Ta and Alexander Bott said Lanez “not only lacks remorse, he is clearly incapable of accepting any responsibility for his own actions.”
The prosecutors referenced Lanez’s claims about the incident on social media and his “full-length album with several songs about the shooting” as examples.
“His online reach is worldwide (millions of followers plus casual observers) and the defendant’s statements embolden his followers so that they too have been complicit in re-traumatizing the victim,” they wrote.
Lawyers for Lanez said in their own sentencing memo that he should get only probation and be released from jail to enter a residential substance abuse program.
They say the evidence that led to his conviction was “questionable at best” and that his lack of remorse should therefore not be a factor in his sentencing. The memo says if the allegations were true, then alcohol abuse and childhood trauma would be factors.
Contributing: Charles Trepany, Edward Segarra USA TODAY; Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press
