Conviction Overturned for Alleged Lil Wayne Tour Bus Shooter

The man previously pleaded guilty to the 2015 shooting of Lil Wayne's tour bus. Earlier this year, however, he appealed his sentence on the grounds that he had been pushed into a plea deal.

July 2, 2018

The conviction of Jimmy Carlton Winfrey, who previously pleaded guilty to firing a weapon at Lil Wayne's tour bus, has been reversed.

Winfrey—a.k.a. Peewee Roscoe—will now have another opportunity in court after Georgia Supreme Court determined that a judge "overstepped her bounds," the Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreported. "I was always very hopeful that the Supreme Court would set some ... lines of demarcation for judges and this certainly does so," Steven Sadow, Winfrey's lawyer, said Friday.

The incident in question occurred following a Weezy show in Atlanta in April 2015. Winfrey, allegedly, pulled up on Wayne's bus fleet on I-285 and opened fire. In July of that year, Winfrey was indicted on 27 charges stemming from the shooting. The following year, Wayne's former bus driver—Alvin Lewis—filed suit against Winfrey, Birdman, and Young Thug for putting him in fear of "death and severe bodily harm."

In February, Winfrey appealed his original 10-year sentence, alleging that Judge Mary Staley Clark had suggested he would be given a harsher sentence unless he accepted plea deal he had previously refuse. Though the judge never outright threatened Winfrey with such a sentence, the implication itself qualifies as an "overreach" of her judicial responsibilities. The former Birdman tour manager, according to Sadow, will now remain in custody until the case returns to court, at which point he can potentially take the proceedings to trial.

Wayne, meanwhile, has recently been teasing the long-awaited (and seemingly actually-going-to-happen-now) release of Tha Carter V following a legal settlement with Birdman.