Tory Lanez has filed a motion for a new trial following his Megan Thee Stallion shooting conviction — but Los Angeles County prosecutors have said his claims “lack substance.”
A copy of the prosecution’s Response to the Defendant’s Motion for a New Trial which was filed on Thursday (April 6), revealed that attorneys Alexander Bott and Kathy Ta filed the opposition on behalf of the District Attorney’s office.
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The prosecutor’s position is that Lanez’s attorneys have filed a “baseless” claim, and that there are a number of reasons why their client (real name Daystar Peterson) wouldn’t be entitled to a new trial.
For one, a new trial may only be granted if the defendant can “demonstrate a reversible error or other defect.” The prosecution argued that Lanez’s arguments for a new trial are based on facts that they didn’t dispute in the original trial — so, by definition, there was no “defect.”
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Secondly, Lanez wasn’t denied the right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment, and neither was any of the evidence — including the admission of the DNA evidence — improper. Moreover, the alleged “improper” evidence wasn’t objected to at trial, making it “proper” by the letter of the law.
Finally, the prosecution believes Lanez’s claim that he wasn’t allowed to testify at trial — and that his rights to due process were violated — were also false.
Meghann Cuniff, the Law & Crime reporter who covered the first trial, broke the story on her Substack page.
“Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David J. Herriford is scheduled to consider Lanez’s new trial request Monday (April 10) at 10:30 a.m. Lanez was to be sentenced that day if Herriford rejects the motion, but the sentencing is now expected to be delayed to late April or early May,” she wrote.
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The Canadian rapper’s legal team officially kickstarted their efforts to appeal his conviction on March 28, citing multiple grounds that they say “deprived” him of a “fair trial.”
At the center of the motion is a September 2020 comment from Tory Lanez’s Instagram account which claimed that Megan’s former best friend and assistant, Kelsey Harris, was not the shooter.
On December 23, 2022, Tory Lanez was found guilty in the felony assault trial related to the 2020 shooting of Megan Thee Stallion.
Following eight days of trial, nearly two days of closing arguments, and a day of deliberations, a grand jury found Tory guilty of all three charges levied against him: felony assault with a semiautomatic firearm, possession of a concealed, unregistered firearm, and discharging a firearm with gross negligence.
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The jury had been given the option of continuing their deliberation after the Christmas holiday if they were unable to reach a decision on December 22. Instead, they decided to resume the following morning.
Tory Lanez, who opted not to testify, faces up to 22 years in prison and deportation to his native Canada at his sentencing.
