It has now been over three weeks since Tory Lanez was sentenced to 10 years in prison for shooting fellow rapper Megan Thee Stallion. And now, he will return to court at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center next Tuesday (September 5) to appeal the sentence, according to hip-hop insider DJ Akademiks.
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Lanez’s motion for an appeal was presented by his attorney Jose Baez, who had recently faced scrutiny for dragging his feet with the appeals process. First noted by Legal Affairs and Trials reporter Meghann Cuniff, who followed Lanez’s trial closely, Baez spent time vacationing in Italy after he first announced he would help Lanez appeal the judge’s decision.
“2+ weeks since Tory Lanez’s lawyer Jose Baez said he’d file a motion to bail Lanez out of jail as he appeals his convictions and 10-year prison sentence,” Cuniff wrote on Twitter last Friday (August 25). “No motion has been filed, and I’m not sure how much of a priority it is for Baez: He’s posting Instagram stories from Italy.”
Baez soon responded to this right before filing the motion, accusing Cuniff of being biased against Lanez.
“It has been brought to my attention that a blogger has claimed that Tory Lanez is not a priority because I’m allegedly in Italy,” he wrote in an Instagram story. “For the record I travel to Italy 2 to 4 times a year. I have both business interests as well as clients who have business in Italy. It is a beautiful country and a privilege to visit. This blogger has had a clear bias against Tory and has attacked everyone associated with him as well as made numerous inaccurate assumptions.”
[RELATED: Megan Thee Stallion Speaks on Tory Lanez Sentencing for the First Time]
It’s unclear how likely it is that Tory could get his sentence reduced at all, but according to Akademiks’ aforementioned post, he is looking to earn bail with his appeal. When first sentenced, he issued a statement to the court where he shared his feelings about Megan Thee Stallion, while still maintaining his innocence.
“We both lost our mothers. We would sit there and drink, and drink until we got numb,” he said to the court before being taken away in handcuffs. “I said some very immature things that I shouldn’t have said. I revealed some secrets I shouldn’t have revealed.”
Soon after this, Megan made a statement of her own while she was performing at Outside Lands festival in San Fransisco on August 13. Thanking those who supported her during the trial, the Houston rapper addressed the people who harassed her in defense of Lanez.
“All the people that rock with me, that fight with me, fight for me, I really appreciate y’all,” she told attendees. “So today I just wanna say, fuck all my haters. None of that shit you was doing or saying broke me. None of that shit y’all was doing or saying to the hotties broke them.”
Photo by Scott Dudelson/WireImage
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