Jailed rapper Tory Lanez has filed an ethics complaint against the Los Angeles attorney who represented him during his 2022 trial before a jury that found him guilty of shooting fellow musician Megan Thee Stallion in the foot.
Lanez, whose real name is Daystar Peterson, sent a letter to the State Bar of California on Oct. 26 claiming that attorney Shawn Holley Chapman breached the legal profession’s code of professional conduct. Chapman withdrew as Lanez’s attorney in the middle of the trial for reasons that were untrue, failed to disclose conflicts of interest and didn’t adequately defend Lanez against allegations of violating a protective court order, according to the letter.
Chapman failed to tell Lanez up front about the relationship she had with the Roc Nation management company, which signed Megan Thee Stallion to a contract, the letter says. The attorney was the producer of the television show “Reasonable Doubt,” which was based on Chapman’s life, the letter continues, and Megan Thee Stallion’s music was used during the show’s second season.
“In the end I lost my case and was convicted of a crime I did not commit because of the actions of Shawn Holley, whom I believe was acting, either explicitly or by implication, at the behest of or in the interests of, Roc Nation,” Lanez’s letter states. “I want the return of the funds I paid attorney Holley and the appropriate discipline to be imposed for her many breaches of professional conduct.”
Holley denied all the allegations in an email to the Southern California Record.
"I have never had a connection to Roc Nation, and Roc Nation has never had a connection to the Hulu show 'Reasonable Doubt,' which I co-produce,” she said. “The State Bar dismissed this claim shortly after it was brought by Mr. Lanez or his representatives over a year ago. Mr. Lanez's suggestion that I did not have his best interests in mind for this reason – or any other – is both false and offensive."
Lanez was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the shooting of Megan Thee Stallion. The defendant paid Chapman between $200,000 and $300,000 to represent him during court proceedings at Los Angeles County Superior Court, according to Lanez’s letter to the State Bar.
“The last payment that was made to her was during my trial on Dec. 17, 2022, and on the very next day … she quit,” Lanez said. “... She withdrew as my lawyer during the course of my trial, leaving me scrambling to find new counsel and having any new counsel’s hands tied by the work she had already done.”
The letter alleges that Chapman ended her representation of Lanez, in part, because she had to be in Washington, D.C., for a trial involving another client. But such a calendar conflict should have been known before Lanez’s trial started, the Canadian rapper said.
“Instead, she took my money, barely offered a defense on my behalf and then abandoned me in the middle of fighting for my life,” the letter says.
There were also allegations of witnesses being bribed during the case.
Lanez alleges that the attorney forced him to take a plea bargain and that DNA testing of the weapon involved in the shooting was cut short despite his plea of being innocent of the crime.