Tory Lanez isn’t getting out of jail any time soon.
On Wednesday, Nov. 12, a California court denied the rapper’s appeal of his guilty verdict following charges for firing a gun at Megan Thee Stallion.
A panel of three judges from the California 2nd District Court of Appeal affirmed Lanez’s conviction on three felony counts, according to reports from AP. Lanez was convicted in December of 2022 of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, having a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle, and discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
During the trial, Megan testified that in July 2020—after they left a party at Kylie Jenner’s home—Lanez fired the gun at the back of her feet and told her to dance as she walked away from a car they had been riding in together with two other friends. The “Mamushi” rapper had bullet fragments in both feet that had to be surgically removed, publicly identifying Lanez as the person who had fired the gun.
Back in August, the Canadian artist’s attorney pleaded with the judges at oral arguments in the appeal, insisting: “Daystar Peterson is innocent.”
But this month, the appeals court rejected all of the defense’s claims of errors from Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Herriford, who oversaw the trial.
Judge Anne H. Egerton, who wrote for the three appellate justices, said it was okay for the trial judge to allow Megan to answer questions about how she felt testifying the day she took the stand, per Legal Affairs and Trials with Meghann Cuniff. At the time, she testified that when a woman makes allegations against a man, “people have a hard time believing you” and said that, “I didn’t want to say nothing in the first place.”
Egerton confirmed the jury was correctly told that those kinds of answers can be used to help gauge credibility.
This ruling also affirmed the judge’s decision to allow the prosecution to play a recording of a previous interview with authorities of Kelsie Harris, a friend of Megan and Lanez, who was with them during the shooting.
“Once on the stand, to say Harris was a reluctant witness is an understatement,” Egerton writes. “To question after question, Harris replied she didn’t remember, couldn’t remember, or didn’t know.”
The court also said it was fine for the trial judge to let the jury see an Instagram comment in which Lanez’s account said “that’s not true” on a post that said Harris had shot Megan, which his team argued against during the trial. Lanez’s lawyers argued there was no way of knowing who actually made the comment, claiming it was prejudicial in several ways.
Egerton wrote that “any error in admitting the Instagram post was harmless,” calling it a “minor issue in the case.”
Tory Lanez is currently serving a 10-year sentence at the California Men’s Colony near San Luis Obispo, Calif. He was moved to that facility after he was stabbed a reported 14 times by a fellow inmate at California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi.
