Rapper insisted he was innocent despite previously accepting responsibility
Canadian rapper Tory Lanez has claimed he was wrongfully convicted for shooting hip-hop star Megan Thee Stallion during a row in July 2020.
“I refuse to apologise for something I did not do,” Lanez wrote on Instagram, after he was jailed for 10 years this week for the attack that “drew widespread attention and scrutiny”, said The Washington Post.
However, noted the BBC, his lawyer Jose Baez had earlier told reporters that Lanez was “incredibly remorseful and ashamed and embarrassed”, adding that “he has been nothing but apologetic”.
In his own statement to the Los Angeles court, Lanez, 30, said he accepted responsibility for what he “did wrong that night”. But in his subsequent Instagram post he said he only meant to take responsibility for “all the verbal and intimate moments I shared”.
Megan Thee Stallion, a Grammy winner, had to have surgery after being shot in both feet in the incident. She said it happened after the pair left a party at Kylie Jenner’s Hollywood home and got into an argument over Lanez’s rapping talent. Since she came forward with the allegations, she said, she’s faced abuse and “not experienced a single day of peace”.
Iggy Azalea, a rapper, songwriter and model, wrote a letter to the trial judge asking for a punishment for Lanez that was “transformative, not life-destroying”, said the Daily Mail.
She wrote that Lanez is “far from your average entitled rap star” and said she had “witnessed him defuse so many sticky situations with kindness and humour”.
Lanez had told her “he’s glad God put him in jail”, she said, as it is “an opportunity to humble himself and soften his heart”. It was, she added, “ironic to hear one of the kindest people I know strive to become even kinder”.
However, prosecutors said they sought a longer sentence because they felt Lanez has not shown any remorse. In a 12-page sentencing memo to the court, they said he had spent nearly three years “waging a campaign of misinformation to re-traumatise the victim”.
