Rapper Tory Lanez is expected to be sentenced on day two of hearing in Megan Thee Stallion shooting

By ANDREW DALTON
AP Entertainment Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge said he was not inclined to consider Tory Lanez a threat to public safety as he weighs a sentence for the rapper for shooting hip-hop star Megan Thee Stallion in the feet in 2020.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Herriford is expected to hand down a sentence for Lanez on Tuesday afternoon, at the end of a marathon two-day hearing.

He continued to hand small victories to both sides Tuesday morning, leaving little indication of the sentence he’ll issue.

“Defense I’m inclined to agree with you on this one,” Herriford told lawyers for Lanez, who also has no significant criminal record, another point in his favor.

But Herriford agreed with prosecutors that mental illness should not be considered in the sentencing.

Lanez’s lawyers argued that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from his mother’s death when he was 11 years old and other childhood difficulties. That stress led to serious alcohol abuse as an adult, they said.

“If this court can’t give consideration to that,” defense attorney Jose Baez said, “I don’t see how you can give consideration to anything.”

Herriford acknowledged that alcohol was involved in the shooting, but said the defense had not demonstrated that Lanez met the clinical definition of PTSD or alcohol abuse disorder, nor had they met the legal standard for him to consider either in his sentence.

Prosecutors are asking a judge to hand down a 13-year sentence to the 31-year-old Lanez, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson. Lanez was convicted of three felonies: assault with a semiautomatic firearm, having a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle and discharging a firearm with gross negligence.

Lawyers for Lanez said in a sentencing memo that he should get only probation and be released from jail to enter a residential substance abuse program. They plan to appeal his conviction.

Lanez, wearing orange jail garb and a black skull cap, has sat in court at a table with his three lawyers for both days of the hearing.

Megan did not appear in court to give a victim impact statement, instead having prosecutors read one for her in court on Monday.

“Since I was viciously shot by the defendant, I have not experienced a single day of peace,” Megan said in the statement read by Deputy District Attorney Kathy Ta. “Slowly but surely, I’m healing and coming back, but I will never be the same.”

She added that Lanez’s “crime warrants the full weight of the law.”

The judge also allowed seven pro-Lanez witnesses, including his father and the mother of his 6-year-old son, to give statements on Lanez’s charitable giving, his childhood trauma, and his loving parenting.

Megan testified during the trial that Lanez had 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 in summer 2020. The pair had left a party at Kylie Jenner’s Hollywood Hills home.