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Mystikal, having endured similar charges and serving time in the past, faces up to life in prison after a first-degree rape indictment was handed down. The charge is tied to an alleged July 30 incident at the Louisiana rapper’s home and other charges were levied as well.
Mystikal, whose real name is Michael Lawrence Tyler, was indicted by an Ascension Parish grand jury this past Tuesday and the 51-year-old veteran rapper remains in the Ascension Parish Prison according to a report from the New Orleans Advocate. Mystikal’s previous attorney shot down the allegations but he has since retained new counsel in Joel Pearce, who represented the rapper in 2017 in another rape case that Mystikal served 18 months in prison over.
“It’s an indictment,” Pearce said a day after the reading of the indictment. “It means nothing. We look forward to our day in court.”
During a court bail hearing in August, Mystikal’s former attorney noted that the rapper’s accuser was someone known to him romantically since the late 1990s and never once was accused of the crimes he’s faced before. However, it wasn’t enough to get the judge in the case to grant bail.
Mystikal also faces single counts of simple criminal damage to property, false imprisonment, domestic abuse battery by strangulation, simple robbery, possession of heroin, illegal possession of Xanax, possession of methamphetamine, possession of marijuana, and possession of drug paraphernalia.