Tory Lanez Appeal: His Lawyers Say Megan Thee Stallion Shooting Trial Was ‘Riddled With Errors’

Attorneys for Tory Lanez (Daystar Peterson) urged an appeals court to overturn his convictions for shooting Megan Thee Stallion, arguing that his trial was “riddled with errors” and that prosecutors misled the jury about DNA evidence.

At a crucial hearing Monday (Aug. 18) in Lanez’s appellate case, attorney Laura L. Cepero told a panel of five judges that the singer’s legal team has an “unwavering belief” that he is innocent in the 2020 shooting and that he did not receive a fair trial when he was convicted in 2022.

Among other issues raised, Cepero told the appeals court that prosecutors had misconstrued DNA evidence during closing statements to the jury — and that tests showed that there was only a “one in a million” chance that Lanez’s DNA was on the gun used in the shooting.

“It is actually marginally more likely that another member of the African American population touched this gun over Mr. Peterson,” she told the appeals court. “If our jury had heard that Mr. Peterson maybe one in a million touched the gun, I believe that would have been enough to tip that scale and show reasonable doubt.”

Representing prosecutors, Deputy Attorney General Michael C. Keller argued back that the evidence against Lanez had clearly been strong enough to convict him, including three instances in which the star appeared to have “tacitly admitted” that he pulled the trigger: “He was clearly accepting responsibility for something very big,” Keller told the court.

Following a high-profile trial, a jury found Lanez guilty in December 2022 on three felony counts for shooting Megan during a drunken roadside argument in the Hollywood Hills in July 2020. According to prosecutors, when Megan got out of a vehicle and began walking away, Lanez shouted “Dance, b—h!” and fired a gun at her feet, striking her once. In August 2023, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Lanez and his supporters have long maintained his innocence; his legal team has filed multiple forms of appeal to challenge the verdict, and have claimed publicly that new evidence exonerates him (Megan’s reps and prosecutors strongly deny that). In their direct appeal — the case argued Monday — they’ve called the verdict “a miscarriage of justice.”

At the hearing, in addition to the arguments about DNA, Cepero said that Lanez’s lawyers had not been allowed to properly cross-examine Harris after jurors heard a tape in which she pinned the blame on Lanez, violating his constitutional right to “confront” a key witness. She also claimed that prosecutors misled jurors by claiming in opening statements that Justin Edison, a former bodyguard to Megan, was going to testify against Lanez — something that never actually took place.

But Keller, representing the government, urged the court to uphold the verdict against Lanez. In a relatively brief rebuttal, he said that many of the arguments from the singer’s lawyers had been waived because they had not been raised at the trial — and that others were simply “nonsensical.”

“The evidence in this case was compelling,” Kelly told the judges.

Following Monday’s hearing, the appeals court will issue its ruling on the case at some point in the coming weeks or months. When it does, Tory faces long odds: In 2022, California appeals courts overturned a defendant’s guilty verdict in just 19% of cases.

The hearing came more than five years after the July 12, 2020, shooting, which happened as a driver was shuttling Lanez, Megan and her assistant/friend Kelsey Harris from a party at Kylie Jenner’s house. Following the incident, Megan initially told police officers that she had cut her foot stepping on broken glass, but days later alleged that she had been shot. Lanez was eventually charged with the shooting in October 2022.

During a blockbuster trial in Los Angeles court, Lanez’s lawyers tried to sow doubt over who had really pulled the trigger, painting a scenario in which Harris could have been the shooter. But a key defense witness offered confusing eyewitness testimony, and prosecutors pointed to an earlier interview in which Harris pinned the blame squarely on Lanez. Megan herself offered powerful testimony that Lanez had been the one to shoot her, and neither Lanez nor the driver took the witness stand.

Lanez has already lost some of his appeal efforts. In a pair of rulings last week, the same appellate court denied so-called habeas corpus petitions seeking to overturn the convictions. Those filings claimed that key pieces of evidence, including the gun, had gone “missing,” but the appeals court rejected those claims.

If the verdict is eventually upheld, Lanez can appeal the ruling to the California Supreme Court, though that case would face long odds to even be heard by the high court in the first place.