Court denies Canadian rapper Tory Lanez’s appeal of his conviction in Megan Thee Stallion shooting

Tory Lanez performs at HOT 97 Summer Jam 2019 in East Rutherford, N.J. on June 2, 2019, left, and Megan Thee Stallion attends the 5th annual Diamond Ball benefit gala in New York on Sept. 12, 2019. (Photos by Scott Roth, left, Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

LOS ANGELES — A California court on Wednesday denied rapper Tory Lanez’s appeal of his guilty verdict on charges he fired a gun at Megan Thee Stallion.

A three-judge panel from the California 2nd District Court of Appeal issued a ruling saying they affirm the conviction of the 33-year-old Lanez on three felony counts.

Lanez was convicted of three felonies in December of 2022: assault with a semiautomatic firearm; having a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle and discharging a firearm with gross negligence. His trial became a cultural phenomenon, with the prominence of its key players and the discussions it raised about gender, race, hip-hop and online toxicity.

Megan, whose lega l name is Megan Pete, testified that in July 2020, after they left a party at Kylie Jenner’s Hollywood Hills home, Lanez fired the gun at the back of her feet and shouted for her to dance as she walked away from an SUV in which they had been riding together with two other

She had bullet fragments in both feet that had to be surgically removed. Months later, she publicly identified Lanez as the person who had fired the gun.

Attorneys for Lanez, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday’s ruling. They can petition to have the California Supreme Court hear the appeal.

“Daystar Peterson is innocent,” his attorney Crystal Morgan told the judges at oral arguments in the appeal in August.

But 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, writing for the three appellate justices, said it was fine for the trial judge to allow Megan to answer questions about how she felt about testifying the day she took the stand. Megan 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 said the jury was correctly told that those kinds of answers can be used to help gauge credibility.

The 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.”

Egerton wrote that the prosecution was correctly allowed to play excerpts of the recording during the trial and enter the entire interview as an exhibit.

The court also said it was acceptable 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. Lanez’s lawyers argued there was no way of knowing who actually made the comment, and 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.”

And the judges rejected an argument that showing the jury a photo of a shirtless and tattooed Lanez evoked racial and other prejudices.

A representative for Megan didn’t immediately answer an email seeking comment on the ruling.

Lanez is serving a 10-year sentence at the California Men’s Colony near San Luis Obispo, California. He was moved there after he was stabbed by a fellow inmate at California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi. An Instagram post on Lanez’s account said he was stabbed 14 times and both his lungs collapsed.

The Canadian Lanez began releasing mixtapes in 2009 and saw a steady rise in popularity, moving on to major label albums, two of which reached the top 10 on Billboard’s charts.

Megan Thee Stallion was already a major rising star at the time of the shooting, and her prominence has risen ever since. She won a Grammy for best new artist in 2021, and she had No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 with her own song “Savage,” featuring Beyonce, and as a guest on Cardi B’s “WAP.”

Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press