Megan Thee Stallion is here in the SDFLA

The Megan Thee Stallion case started before Judge Altonaga with opening statements yesterday. Some coverage by Meghann Cuniff here:

 

The jury of five men and four women saw the obscene video during Megan’s lawyer Marie Hayrapetian’s 20-minute opening statement.

Before she played it, Hayrapetian said she wanted “to acknowledge how disturbing this is.”

“Imagine having to sit in court and watch this play for a room full of strangers. That’s what we’re asking Megan to do today, but you need to see it to understand what Milagro Cooper promoted,” said Hayrapetian, an associate in Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP’s Los Angeles office.

The approximately 45-second video included commentary from Milagro as she played it for viewers on her live stream. “Watch how this post jump … I just liked it and I tweeted ‘go to my likes.’”

“I apologize to everyone in this courtroom for having to see that, especially to Megan,” Hayrapetian said. “But Milagro Cooper made the choice to promote it.”

Hayrapetian began her opening by playing audio of the gunshots that Daystar “Tory Lanez” Peterson fired at Megan on July 12, 2020. She told jurors he was convicted in December 2022, and the California Court of Appeal affirmed his convictions last week. She played an excerpt of Milagro discussing Megan that begins, “At the end of the day, a bitch lying on somebody is low down. So believe what the fuck you want to believe.” Milagro goes on to say she wants to “slap” Megan.

“This case is about someone who wasn’t there that night, the defendant, Milagro Cooper. She didn’t see the fear or the blood or the gun, but she saw something else: Her shot had the spotlight,” Hayrapetian said. “This case is about what Milagro Cooper did with her shot at the spotlight.”

Hayrapetian said jurors will learn “how she turned attacking Megan into her brand, how she coordinated with Tory Lanez and his team, how she built her platform by tearing Megan down.”

She said the case “is not about whether Tory shot Megan. That has already been decided: He did. This case is about Milagro Cooper’s continued effort to undo what’s already been done, to free Tory.”

The first thing Milagro’s lawyer Nathacha Bien-Aime told jurors in her opening was, “Yes. Megan Pete was shot.” But she said “whether he did or not, that case, that tragedy, that happened in California.”

“The plaintiff desperately wants to drive a California criminal trial across the country, to replay it for you here in Miami, Florida,” Bien-Aime said.