New Evidence Claim In Tory Lanez Case Rejected By Attorney General

Tory Lanez and his legal team attempted to submit new evidence relevant to his 2020 shooting case, but the effort was shot down. The Canadian singer moved to use a statement from his driver, Jauquan Smith, who was there on the night of the shooting and claimed he saw Megan Thee Stallion‘s ex-friend Kelsey Harris holding a gun.

However on July 29, the California Attorney General’s Office ruled to not accept it. The decision came after the court cited previously undisclosed statements from Lanez’s trial lawyer, George Mgdesyan, who chose not to call Smith at the time of the trial. Therefore, the court argued that this would not qualify as new evidence because it would “not directly contradict [Megan] Pete’s testimony that petitioner [Lanez] was the person who shot her.”

According legal reporter Meghann Cuniff, “Tory Lanez says a statement from his driver constitutes new evidence in the shooting of Megan Thee Stallion, but the state says he knew how the driver would testify and chose not to call him.”

In her article about the situation, Cuniff explains, “The filing responds to a habeas petition from Lanez’s appellate lawyers filed in December that said ‘it was unknown until this time what Smith had witnessed and what he would have stated,’ about the July 2020 shooting. The transcript of Mgdesyan’s statements show that isn’t true, according to the 38-page brief from Deputy Attorney General Michael C. Keller.”

In December 2022, Lanez was found guilty of shooting the “Cobra” rapper in the foot after a July 2020 party in Los Angeles. In August 2023, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for all three charges prosecutors had brought against him: assault with a firearm, illegal possession of a firearm, and negligent discharge of a gun for shooting the victim.