{"id":47553,"date":"2025-09-25T19:40:41","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T19:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/25\/metro-boomin-found-not-liable-at-civil-sexual-assault-trial\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T19:40:41","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T19:40:41","slug":"metro-boomin-found-not-liable-at-civil-sexual-assault-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/25\/metro-boomin-found-not-liable-at-civil-sexual-assault-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Metro Boomin Found Not Liable at Civil Sexual Assault Trial"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tJurors handed hip-hop producer Metro Boomin<\/a> a decisive win at his civil sexual assault trial in Los Angeles on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter only about an hour of deliberation, the panel of five men and three women unanimously found that plaintiff Vanessa LeMaistre had failed to prove her claims<\/a> that the influential musician, born Leland T. Wayne, had raped her at a Southern California hotel in 2016. Wayne was found not liable on all four causes of action.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m blessed. I\u2019m relieved,\u201d Wayne told Rolling Stone<\/em> as he exited the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. \u201cI never thought I would ever have to do anything like that. I\u2019m just relieved. It\u2019s a burden lifted off my back. I\u2019ll just get back to my family and continue to do the great things that I strive to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLeMaistre declined to comment, but her lead lawyer, Michael J. Willemin, said she will continue pursuing her pending mistrial motions \u201cbased on various errors and the admission of certain evidence and the exclusion of certain evidence\u201d during the trial. \u201cWe\u2019ll be pursuing both of those motions for a mistrial and eventually an appeal. This is far from the end of this case,\u201d Willemin said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe evidence wasn\u2019t there,\u201d a male juror said as he left the courthouse. \u201cA lot of it was just testimony or talking about it. There was no substantial, \u2018This is what happened.\u2019 There were no dates recollected correctly. \u2026 She didn\u2019t remember a lot. That was also the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn her lawsuit filed last October, LeMaistre alleged that she \u201cblacked out\u201d after ingesting some Xanax and drinking alcohol given to her by Wayne at a recording studio session. She claimed she later woke up in a strange hotel room and was drifting in and out of consciousness as Wayne was having sex with her.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the witness stand, Wayne vehemently denied the allegations, saying there was \u201cno way in the world\u201d he assaulted LeMaistre. He said the sex was consensual, and the first time he heard LeMaistre was accusing him of anything was when she brought her lawsuit nine years later.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cThis whole lawsuit was born out of a drug den in Peru. In the jungle,\u201d Wayne\u2019s defense lawyer, Justin H. Sanders, said in his closing argument. \u201cThis case is preposterous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring the three-day trial, jurors saw a handwritten note that LeMaistre wrote during a 2024 trip to Peru, where she engaged in an extended \u201cAyahuasca ceremony,\u201d a spiritual ritual involving the ingestion of a psychoactive plant used by indigenous cultures in the Amazon. Titled \u201cPlan Ayahuasca Gave Me,\u201d LeMaistre wrote that she intended to \u201cblow the whistle on Metro Boomin\u201d and publish her \u201cdate rape\u201d allegations in a post on social media. \u201cWe\u2019re asking for 3.4 million to 3.7 million,\u201d she wrote in her sometimes admittedly illegible handwriting. \u201cP.S. I am a medium.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSanders said the notes from Peru were \u201cdisturbing\u201d and not credible. \u201cShe talks to dead people in her mind,\u201d he argued.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his own closing argument, Willemin said his client is the daughter of Haitian immigrants who has suffered \u201can ungodly amount of trauma in her life.\u201d He said shortly before she met Wayne, she lost her nine-month-old son. She was grieving and not interested in a sexual relationship when she visited Wayne at the studio that night, he said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cShe has beliefs that I don\u2019t have, maybe people in this court don\u2019t have. But that doesn\u2019t mean she wasn\u2019t sexually assaulted,\u201d Willemin said. \u201cSome of those beliefs are less than traditional, maybe hard to understand. But the question is, when she [testified], did you believe her? Because if you did, [everything else] is just noise.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tLeMaistre testified over two days on Tuesday and Wednesday. She was the only witness called by her side. The writer and self-described \u201cshaman,\u201d who was 30 when she first met a 22-year-old Wayne in Las Vegas in 2016, testified that she spoke about the alleged assault with a mental health professional she was seeing at a treatment center called Prototypes in the fall of 2016. She later discussed it with professionals again when she called a pair of rape hotlines in 2024, she told jurors.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHaving lost my son, and the defendant assaulting me, have been the two, by far, worst things I\u2019ve ever experienced in my life. It has been excruciatingly painful,\u201d LeMaistre testified. \u201cThis stole the past nine years of my life. I haven\u2019t been able to have any healthy relationships. I want to get married one day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce LeMaistre rested her case, Wayne testified in his own defense, taking the stand as his fellow Atlanta artist Young Thug<\/a> watched from the gallery. \u201cI\u2019m just here to support him,\u201d Young Thug told Rolling Stone<\/em> as he walked into the courthouse Wednesday. \u201cHe\u2019s a longtime friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWayne, 32, told jurors that he found it \u201cpreposterous\u201d that LeMaistre had accused him of raping her<\/a> without a condom. He testified that they actually had sexual relations on two occasions, and that she clearly consented both times.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI really don\u2019t know where to start. This is crazy. I can\u2019t even believe I\u2019m up here doing this right now,\u201d he said of his testimony. \u201cFor her to accuse me of something like this, it\u2019s something I could never fathom. I can\u2019t even say what I think should happen to people who rape people.\u201d Wayne testified that he lost his mother to domestic abuse and believes sexual abusers \u201cshould be tortured and killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring a fierce cross-examination by Sanders, LeMaistre defended her handwritten notes. Asked where she got the $3.4 million to $3.7 million range that she described, she said those were the numbers \u201cgiven to me\u201d during the Ayahuasca ceremony.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith eight jurors listening intently, LeMaistre said that when she first heard the Wayne-produced song \u201cRap Saved Me\u201d in 2017, she believed the lyrics were about her. In the chorus, artists 21 Savage and Offset rap, \u201cShe took a Xanny, then she fainted. I\u2019m from the gutter, ain\u2019t no changing. From the gutter, rap saved me. She drive me crazy, have my baby.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his closing argument, LeMaistre\u2019s lawyer said it was \u201cfar too big a coincidence that a song produced by [Wayne] literally recounted what happened the night of the sexual assault.\u201d But in his sworn testimony, Wayne told jurors that he didn\u2019t pen the lyrics or even suggest them to his collaborators.<\/p>\n

\n\tSanders urged the jurors to consider the evidence. He focused on the fact that LeMaistre was the only witness for her case. \u201cNo single person has been brought into this case to support her allegations,\u201d Sanders said. \u201cWhere are all the therapists she claims she told this to? Was that ever explained to you?\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tHe then focused on LeMaistre\u2019s medical records from 2016, after the disputed hotel encounter with Wayne. The Planned Parenthood records said LeMaistre had denied experiencing any instances of \u201ccoercion.\u201d Later, on Feb. 10, 2025, LeMaistre asked Planned Parenthood to \u201camend\u201d the records and remove her \u201cdenial of coercion.\u201d \u201cThis is called trying to pull a fast one,\u201d Sanders argued Thursday in his closing. \u201cIn this case, Ms. LeMaistre is lying about everything. \u2026 She did not prove her case.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter hugging his lawyers in the courtroom, Wayne told Rolling Stone<\/em> he was grateful Young Thug showed up to support him on Wednesday. \u201cIt meant a lot. He\u2019s a close friend of mine. He\u2019s my brother. I was there for his trial, he was there for mine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Jurors handed hip-hop producer Metro Boomin a decisive win at his civil sexual assault trial in Los Angeles on Thursday. After only about an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":47554,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop","article","has-excerpt","has-avatar","has-author","has-date","has-comment-count","has-category-meta","has-read-more","thumbnail-"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}