New attorney plans to seek Tory Lanez’s release from jail over Megan Thee Stallion shooting
The rapper has swapped in Ronda Dixon for Matthew Barhoma, but Dixon says the judge hasn't yet approved the substitution and a hearing is scheduled this afternoon.
Update: It was decided during today’s hearing that Dixon will not be Lanez’s new lawyer. Orange County attorney Ed Welbourn will instead be substituting in for Barhoma. Read the article here.
Rapper Tory Lanez will be in court today in Los Angeles for a hearing related to a lawyer seeking to join his case.
Ronda Renee Dixon wants to replace Matthew Barhoma as counsel for Lanez, who is in jail awaiting an Aug. 7 sentencing for shooting rapper Megan Thee Stallion in the feet and injuring her three years ago today.
Lanez, legal name Daystar Peterson, signed a substitution of counsel on June 27, as did Barhoma and Dixon. But Dixon said in a phone interview Tuesday night that Los Angeles County Superior Judge David Herriford has not authorized the substitution. A hearing is scheduled today at 4:15 p.m. in Herriford’s courtroom in downtown Los Angeles.
Dixon believes Herriford must allow her to join the case because of Lanez’s 6th Amendment right to counsel. She said Lanez wants her to work under his current lawyer, prominent Miami attorney Jose Baez, but “me and him have some serious issues, because he won’t talk to me.”
“These guys are just taking advantage of [Lanez],” Dixon told Legal Affairs and Trials with Meghann Cuniff. “They’ve had him sign powers of attorneys. They’re acting on his behalf. … They’re not really asking him what he wants.”
Dixon shared a copy of a motion she drafted that argues Lanez is being subject to cruel and unusual punishment in jail because he’s in isolation due to his celebrity status.
“Because Mr. Peterson has viable, meritorious post-conviction litigation, this court should award bail. The unconstitutional nature of his confinement provides ample justification,” according to the motion. “Peterson’s conviction is not punishable by death. Because he will apply for probation, file an appeal, and pursue additional post-conviction remedies, this court should admit him bail within the court’s discretion.”
Dixon said she recently met with Lanez in jail.
“His eyes were black. He was totally despondent. He told me he wanted to go to state prison. I said, ‘You want to go to state prison? Why?’ He said, ‘At least I’ll be able to go out in the yard and talk to people,’” Dixon said. “That upset me. I don’t think he’s guilty.”
She wrote in her motion, “Merely because he is well known, the Sheriff has decided that Mr. Peterson is of such great threat that he must be confined in the same manner as those convicted of serial rape charges and murder.”
Dixon said she wants Lanez released from jail as she pursues a new trial for evidentiary errors and other issues she said violate the California Racial Justice Act, a law passed in 2020 that allows for exonerations over racism in legal proceedings. She also cited the new California law regarding use of a criminal defendant’s artistic expressions as evidence.
Judge Herriford has already rejected Barhoma’s and Baez’s argument that he shouldn’t have said prosecutors could question Lanez about the music video to his song “CAP,” which features the rapper dressed as a butcher and chopping horse feet. The judge pointed out that the new law doesn’t prohibit questions about songs or other art, it only changes the balancing test that judges must consider when deciding whether to allow the questions.
Dixon’s motion, though, describes the law as an all-out ban.
Without the threat of questions about his music, Lanez “would have testified, and it is our strong belief this would have changed the outcome of his case,” according to Dixon’s motion.
The motion does not appear to have been filed yet. Dixon said Baez doesn’t want her to file it, but she feels it has merit.
“He has to be shackled and he has to be accompanied by a sheriff and two deputies to move,” Dixon said. “He told me he hadn’t seen daylight in four months, that they didn’t take him to the day yard at all. That’s doing something to his psyche.”
Herriford in May rejected a motion for new trial brought by Barhoma and Baez that argued much of what Dixon alleges regarding trial errors.
Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorneys Alexander Bott and Kathy Ta did not immediately return an email seeking comment on Wednesday, but they’ve opposed sentencing delays and want Lanez to serve 13 years in prison. A jury convicted him on Dec. 23 of first-degree assault, discharge of a firearm with gross negligence and having an unregistered and concealed firearm in a vehicle.
Dixon’s draft motion argues Lanez, who will be 31 on July 27, is not a risk to flee if released because he has strong ties to the community.
“The fact he is a public figure make it more likely that he would not flee,” Dixon wrote. “His career is tied to the Los Angeles music industry. While not trivial, the potential sentence in this case is not the type of sentence that an artist would destroy an entire career over.”
She also said Lanez is not a danger to the community.
“Even taking the facts in a manner most favorable to the verdict, Mr. Peterson’s actions demonstrate he was not inclined towards harming the victim,” Dixon wrote, apparently referring to the idea that Lanez told Megan, “Dance, bitch” then fired at the ground. “Thus, while the prosecution targeted him and his counsel with accusations of bribery and obstruction, even those meritless and baseless claims never came close to accusations of victim intimidation or criminal threats.”
Prosecutors, however, have basically described Lanez as a societal menace. They want his use of a firearm and the great bodily harm he caused Megan to be aggravating factors in his sentence, saying in a May 23 motion that his crimes show “a high level of callousness.”
“The brazenness of Defendant’s conduct is alarming but the conscious disregard for the well-being and safety of all those around him signifies a high degree of indifference for human life,” according to the motion. Their full sentencing recommendation describes his “campaign of misinformation” aimed at humiliating and re-traumatizing Megan.
“His online posts for nearly three years have re-traumatized the victim,” prosecutors wrote. “His online reach is worldwide (millions of followers plus casual observers) and the defendant’s statements embolden his followers so that they too have been complicit in re-traumatizing the victim. He is responsible for the effect of his words and his actions.”
Lanez’s lawyers have not yet filed their sentencing recommendation. Herriford gave them until Aug. 1 to do so after they unsuccessfully asked the California Courts of Appeal to remove him from the case.
Dixon told Legal Affairs and Trials with Meghann Cuniff that Barhoma charged Lanez $90,000 for “that asinine brief,” referring to the appellate writ seeking Herriford’s recusal. She said Lanez has only paid him $40,000 so far, and Barhoma was declining to send her case materials because of the debt.
“What he’s paid his attorneys so far is unreal. It’s unimaginable. They were only concerned about getting paid,” Dixon said.
She said Barhoma’s attempts to recuse Herriford were ill conceived.
“In order to cover up their own ineptitude, they lied to him and blamed it all on the judge,” Dixon said.
Reached by email on Wednesday, Barhoma said Dixon’s statements are false.
“None of it is true. And Ronda Dixon has all case materials from Mr. Baez and I,” he said.
Baez has not returned an email seeking comment.
Dixon said today’s hearing was pushed to 4:15 p.m. to accommodate Baez’s schedule, which she said is not in Lanez’s best interest because he’ll be transported to the courthouse from jail during standard transport times, then forced to wait in a holding cell until it’s time to appear before Herriford.
“I told Jose Baez off,” Dixon said. “I said, ‘You know, your client is the one who has to sit handcuffed all day.’”
Dixon has been a licensed attorney in California since 1988. She began her legal career in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office appellate division and currently operates the Dixon Justice Center law firm in Los Angeles. According to her LinkedIn profile, she operated an addiction recovery center for six years and volunteered as a radio show host for a social justice program focused on issues important to Black women.
She told me in our phone call last night that her practice focuses on criminal defense, immigration and entertainment law.
“I know what I’m doing and I know what I’m talking about,” she said. “I’m gong to keep coming like a Mack truck with two trains behind it, OK? I don’t play.”
Lanez was arrested on a gun charge shortly after the July 12, 2020, shooting, which occurred on a residential street in the Hollywood Hills about 4:25 a.m. as he, Megan and Megan’s now-former friend Kelsey Harris were leaving reality star Kylie Jenner’s home. At the time, the rappers were “friends with each other, sharing a brief intimate relationship,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing recommendation.
He wasn’t initially charged with the shooting because Megan told first responders she’d only stepped on glass, despite requiring surgery to remove bullet fragments in her feet. Some still remain, and Megan testified she still has pain in her feet. In addition to the three felonies, jurors concluded Lanez caused Megan great bodily harm when he shot her.
In their opposition to Lanez’s motion for new trial, prosecutors said the evidence against him was “overwhelming,” It included a record phone call he made to Harris from jail in which he repeatedly apologized for “that shit,” asks how Megan is and what hospital she’s in and repeatedly says he was highly intoxicated and “never would have done that shit” if he hadn’t been.
“I don’t even remember what we was even arguing about,” Lanez said.
During the hearing on his motion for new trial, Lanez waived his attorney-client privilege over several emails between him and his original lawyer, prominent celebrity attorney Shawn Holley.
In one, Holley told Lanez, “I am not comfortable advancing the ‘Kelsie Defense’ , primarily because I don’t find it to be a viable strategy,” referring to Megan’s friend and assistant, Kelsey Nicole Harris, who was with Megan and Lanez when Megan was shot.
“In light of that, you should discuss with George his willingness and ability to move forward with that defense and if he can do so by the trial,” Holley continued, referring to George Mgdesyan, who represented Lanez in trial and argued Harris was the one who shot Megan.
Barhoma and Baez argued in their motion for new trial that Holley was personally conflicted because she’d been implicated in alleged bribes offered to Harris. Judge Herriford rejected the argument and noted that Holley had known about the Harris allegations for months before telling Lanez she didn’t think blaming Megan’s friend for shooting her was a good idea.
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I truly cannot. Thanks for keeping us updated on this 💗
The drama!! It feels like every new person he hires just gets more and more incompetent. Desperate. Wild that she said all that on the phone- thanks for getting that interview and keeping us extremely up to date!