- Lanez’s team alleges undisclosed evidence in Megan’s civil case could help overturn his conviction.
- Lanez maintains innocence, denies ever being violent towards women.
- Appellate battle faces high threshold, often unsuccessful in overturning convictions.
Tory Lanez and his legal team are trying to get him out of prison, planning to file another appeal following a failed attempt. “I’ve never been violent toward a woman,” said the rapper who’s hoping California Gov. Gavin Newsom grants him clemency.
The Canadian rapper sat down for his first broadcast interview from behind bars, where he opened up to NBC News about his team’s plan to get him free from prison. According to Lanez–real name Daystar Shemuel Shua Peterson–his attorney alleges records in Megan Thee Stallion’s civil defamation suit revealed that there may have been evidence that was never turned over during his 2022 trial.
“I believe not only that I was wrongfully convicted, but the amount of new evidence that has emerged since that trial, I think, has been overwhelming,” Lanez said on Wednesday, Dec. 17.
Peterson is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence after being convicted of shooting Megan Thee Stallion in the foot in July 2020. He has maintained his innocence since the shooting came to light in 2020.
Just last month, California’s Second District Court of Appeal denied Daystar’s appeal after it found “no ineffective assistance of counsel or prejudicial trial court error.” But, on Wednesday, his legal team said it plans to file a new appeal to the California Supreme Court, which would include allegations of a Brady violation.
As reported by NBC News, the Brady rule requires prosecutors to turn over material or potentially favorable information to the defense. Lanez is also requesting either a pardon or clemency from California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Elsewhere in his interview, Lanez insisted he’s in a place of healing and doesn’t want his words to be taken as an attack on Megan.
“When I talk about my case, I don’t want it to be taken as me coming at her, because it’s not that,” Peterson said from the California Men’s Colony, a prison in San Luis Obispo. “I’m just asking for somebody in the system to look at my case and look at the evidence and ask if this was fair.”
Megan testified during the trial that she sought medical treatment for her gunshot wound and required surgery to remove bullet fragments. Her surgeon also testified, though the fragments were never presented as evidence.
During his interview, Tory insisted that he’s “never been violent towards a woman,” claiming there’s a “misconception” about him in the media.
“I’ve never been violent towards a woman. I would never hit a woman, let alone shoot a woman,” he told NBC News. “There is definitely a very big misconception about me that seems to the public as [if] I’m this monster. I feel like I was catapulted into this poster child for the un-protection of Black women and it’s just so unlike me. And I’ve never really had a chance to express that. But you can look at my criminal record. I don’t have one, I never had one. And I feel like that connotation that I would do anything of this monstrous proportion is just completely incorrect, and it’s wrong.”
When asked whether or not he regrets not testifying on the witness stand, Lanez said: “I think if I would’ve taken the stand, the verdict would’ve definitely been very different.”
Earlier this month, Megan won a defamation lawsuit against blogger Milagro Cooper, whom she accused of making false claims about her and promoting a sexually explicit deepfake video of her.
Cooper’s attorney, Ronda Dixon, says it was during that civil trial that she reviewed the rapper’s medical records as part of the evidence. Dixon was in contact with Lanez’s attorney, Crystal Morgan, since Lanez gave a deposition in the civil case. She alerted Morgan to a document that Lanez’s team says wasn’t in the medical records it was provided during his 2022 trial.
“It’s missing from our date-stamped official copy of evidence from the criminal trial, which is significant because this particular piece of paper says that they remove fragments and place them in bags and gave them to a security guard that works at Cedars Sinai,” Morgan said Wednesday.
According to NBC News, who’s seen the document, it appears to be a pathology report from Cedars Sinai. Dated July 14, 2020, the outlet says the document claims a security employee picked up an evidence bag with a “foreign body,” though it doesn’t list Megan’s name, nor does it describe what the foreign body is. It does list Megan’s date of birth.
Morgan now questions whether the bags contained bullet fragments, where those fragments are and why they were never turned over to Lanez’s defense. A lack of disclosure of the document and the evidence bags could be a potential violation of Lanez’s due process rights under the Brady rule, Morgan said.
“The reason why this evidence is significant is because under Brady v. Maryland, we could have as a defense come up with a different alternative theory,” Morgan told the outlet. “And we didn’t have that chance, or perhaps we could have questioned the doctors differently when they are on stand to impeach them, because it does look suspicious.”
With this appeal, Lanez’s team will have to prove that the evidence was withheld during his trial, and also that it was favorable to his defense and could have swayed the outcome of the case. According to NBC News legal analyst Misty Marris, it’s a very high threshold and often unsuccessful, she said.
“This is a really, really difficult appellate argument for defendants to prove, because they have to show if the evidence actually came into court, the jury would have found differently,” Marris said. “It’s an uphill battle, and it’s something that often torpedoes any defense appellate argument.”
