Rapper Tory Lanez was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Tuesday for shooting and wounding hip-hop superstar Megan Thee Stallion.
Los Angeles Supreme Court Judge David Herriford handed down the sentence to 31-year-old Lanez, who was convicted in December of three felonies: assault with a semi-automatic firearm, having a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle and firing a firearm with gross negligence.
The sentence ends a dramatic process that sparked a cultural firestorm in the hip-hop community, raising issues such as black victims’ unwillingness to speak to police, gender politics in hip-hop, online toxicity, protection of black women and the ramifications of misogynoir, a particular brand of misogyny black women experience.
Judge Herriford said it was “difficult to reconcile” between the kind, charitable person and good father that many people described to Lanez at the sentencing hearing, with the person who fired the gun at Megan.
“Sometimes good people do bad things,” Judge Herriford said. “Actions have consequences, and in this case there are no winners.”
Megan testified that Lanez fired the gun at the back of her feet and screamed for her to dance as she walked away from an SUV they had driven in July 2020 after leaving a pool party at Kylie Jenner’s Hollywood Hills home. She had to have surgery to remove bullet fragments.
“Since I was savagely shot by the defendant, I have not experienced a single day of peace,” Megan said in a statement read by a prosecutor on Monday. “Slowly but surely I am healing and coming back, but I will never be the same again.”
Lanez asked Judge Herriford for mercy just before the judge delivered his verdict. Lanez asked for probation or a minimum prison sentence.
“If I could reverse and change the chain of events that night,” Lanez continued. “The victim was my friend. The victim is someone I still care about to this day.”
He added: “Anything I did wrong that night I take full responsibility for.”
Before sentencing, Lanez’s father, Sonstar Peterson, shed tears as he shared how the rapper’s mother died when he was 11, just days after she first showed symptoms of the rare blood disorder that would lead to her death .
“I don’t think anyone will ever get over that,” he said of their youngest child, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson. “But his music became his outlet.”
Lanez began releasing mixtapes in 2009 and saw a steady rise in popularity, continuing with major label albums. His last two reached the top 10 on the Billboard charts.
Megan Thee Stallion, now 28, was already a huge rising star at the time of filming and her fame has skyrocketed since then. Born Megan Pete, she won a Grammy for Best New Artist in 2021, and had No. 1 singles with “Savage,” featuring Beyoncé, and as a guest on Cardi B’s “WAP.”
The elder Peterson, who is a Christian minister, was one of many people who made statements about Lanez’s character and charity – as was the mother of Lanez’s young son, who spoke in court about his qualities as a father. Dozens of others wrote letters to Judge Herriford, including rapper Iggy Azalea, asking the judge to issue a verdict that was “transformative, not life-destroying.”
Judge Herriford said Lanez’s son, who is about six years old, also sent a handwritten letter, but the judge did not further describe it.
Lanez has been in prison since his conviction. A Los Angeles County jail chaplain said in court Monday that Lanez has led daily prayer groups that have eased tensions in the protective custody unit where he was being held.
Judge Herriford denied a request from Lanez’s attorneys for a new trial on May 9. Such requests immediately after conviction are common and rarely successful. Lawyers for Lanez had argued that there was insufficient evidence to convict him and that some of the evidence presented to the jurors should not have been allowed.
The lawyers argued that Megan’s testimony that Lanez was urging her not to go to the police because he was on parole and would be in serious trouble was both untrue and an inappropriate admission of past bad deeds. They said DNA evidence prosecutors used to claim Lanez was the likely shooter did not meet industry standards.
Lawyers for Lanez had said in a sentencing memo that he would only receive probation and be released from prison to participate in a residential substance abuse program. They plan to appeal the conviction.
Judge Herriford found earlier on Monday that Megan was a particularly vulnerable victim when she was shot, but that Lanez was not particularly cruel or numb by shooting at her.
“She has permanent scars, physically,” Deputy District Attorney Alexander Bott said in court.
“And she will definitely have emotional scars for the rest of her life.”
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