Tory Lanez is seeking freedom from prison as his attorney alleges records in Megan Thee Stallion's civil defamation suit revealed that there may have been evidence that was never turned over during his 2022 shooting trial.
“I believe not only that I was wrongfully convicted, but the amount of new evidence that has emerged since that trial, I think, has been overwhelming,” Lanez told NBC News on Wednesday in his first broadcast interview from behind bars.
Lanez, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, is serving a 10-year prison sentence. Megan Thee Stallion, born Megan Pete, testified that Peterson shot her in the foot in July 2020 as they were leaving a party hosted by Kylie Jenner in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles.
He has maintained his innocence since the incident came to light in 2020.
California’s Second District Court of Appeal denied Lanez’s appeal last month after it found “no ineffective assistance of counsel or prejudicial trial court error.” But his legal team said Wednesday it plans to file a new appeal, to the California Supreme Court, which would include allegations of a Brady violation.
The Brady rule, established in 1963, requires prosecutors to turn sover material or potentially favorable information to the defense.
Lanez is also requesting either a pardon or clemency from California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
More than three years after his conviction, Lanez said he's in a place of healing and doesn't want his words to be taken as an attack on Megan.
"When I talk about my case, I don't want it to be taken as me coming at her, because it's not that," Lanez said from the California Men's Colony, a prison in San Luis Obispo. "I'm just asking for somebody in the system to look at my case and look at the evidence and ask if this was fair."
During the 2022 trial, Megan testified that she sought medical treatment for her gunshot wound and required surgery to remove bullet fragments. Her surgeon also testified, but the fragments were never presented as evidence.
Megan won a defamation lawsuit this month against blogger Milagro Cooper, whom she accused of making false claims about her and promoting a sexually explicit deepfake video of her. Cooper’s attorney, Ronda Dixon, says it was during that civil trial that she reviewed Megan's medical records as part of the evidence.
Dixon was in touch with Lanez's attorney, Crystal Morgan, because Lanez gave a deposition in the civil case. She alerted Morgan to a document that Lanez’s team says wasn't in the medical records it was provided during his 2022 trial.
"It's missing from our date-stamped official copy of evidence from the criminal trial, which is significant because this particular piece of paper says that they remove fragments and place them in bags and gave them to a security guard that works at Cedars Sinai," Morgan said Wednesday.
NBC News has seen a document that appears to be a pathology report from Cedars Sinai. The document, dated July 14, 2020, says a security employee picked up an evidence bag with a "foreign body."
The document doesn't list Megan’s name, nor does it describe what the foreign body is. It does list Megan’s date of birth.
Morgan now questions whether the bags contained bullet fragments, where those fragments are and why they were never turned over to Lanez's defense. A lack of disclosure of the document and the evidence bags could be a potential violation of Lanez's due process rights under the Brady rule, Morgan said.
"The reason why this evidence is significant is because under Brady v. Maryland, we could have as a defense come up with a different alternative theory," Morgan said. "And we didn't have that chance, or perhaps we could have questioned the doctors differently when they are on stand to impeach them, because it does look suspicious."
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office didn't respond to a request for comment on the allegation.
Lanez's team will have to prove not only that the evidence was withheld during his trial, but also that it was favorable to his defense and could have swayed the outcome of the case, according to NBC News legal analyst Misty Marris. It's a very high threshold and often unsuccessful, she said.
"This is a really, really difficult appellate argument for defendants to prove, because they have to show if the evidence actually came into court, the jury would have found differently," Marris said. "It's an uphill battle, and it's something that often torpedoes any defense appellate argument."
An attorney for Megan didn't respond to a request for comment. She has previously spoken out about the case, saying in a documentary last year that the shooting and the trial deeply affected her mental health.
Megan said she experienced harassment online from bloggers and gossip sites, as well as threats to her physical safety. She obtained a restraining order against Lanez after she alleged that he was using surrogates to harass her from prison.
“If it wasn’t me and I was on the outside looking in and something happened to me, I wouldn’t want to come forward,” she said in “Megan Thee Stallion: In Her Words.”
“If this famous lady can have this happen to her and nothing get done about it, what the f--- do that say for a person who is just a civilian who don’t have the resources to fight?”
Lanez said he feels the case has painted him as a "monstrous person" who he isn't and insisted that he would never be violent toward women. His time in prison has traumatized him, he said, noting that he nearly died this year after he was stabbed more than a dozen times.
"Truthfully, I've done my best to keep my head above water, but mentally, I've gone through trauma that I sometimes even struggle with," Lanez said. "Because I've never imagined myself dealing with things that I would have to deal with."
