Mystikal Faces Life Sentence After Being Indicted On First-Degree Rape Charge

New Orleans-based rapper Mystikal faces life in prison after being indicted on a charge of first-degree rape from an alleged incident in July.

Mystikal is facing a life sentence after being indicted on a first-degree rape charge. According to The Advocate, on Tuesday (September 6), the three-time Grammy Award nominated rapper received a sexual assault charge along with nine other criminal counts from an Ascension Parish grand jury, citing an alleged incident in July.

Mystikal, whose real name is Michael Lawrence Tyler, is accused of first-degree rape, domestic abuse, strangulation and robbery following a financial dispute at his Prairieville residence on July 30. If convicted at trial, the 51-year-old faces a mandatory life sentence at trial.

According to two indictments against him, Tyler has also been charged with individual 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. Tyler remains in Ascension Parish Prison without bail, but his legal team maintains the rapper’s innocence.

“It’s an indictment,” Joel Pearce, Mystikal’s new attorney, said Wednesday (September 7). “It means nothing. We look forward to our day in court.”

Mystikal, who was previously signed to Master P’s No Limit Records in the ’90s, was sentenced to six years in prison in 2004 after pleading guilty to sexual battery. Prior to his sentencing, in July 2002, a hairstylist for the rapper claimed that he and his two bodyguards forced the woman to perform oral sex on them after not turning her into police for stealing $80,000 worth of the rapper’s checks.

Released in 2010 after a six-year imprisonment, Tyler was subsequently registered as a sex offender in Louisiana. One of the bodyguards, Leland “Pokie” Ellis, received three years in prison while the other, Vercy Carter, got four years. Tyler was sentenced to three months in prison for a second time in 2012 after a misdemeanor domestic abuse count. Per Tyler’s attorney, the incident was an “unfortunate incident” between two domestic partners “who have cared about each other for 10 years and also shared children.

In fall 2018, Mystikal and another man were charged with first-degree rape and second-degree kidnapping charges, which were dropped in December 2020 after a second grand jury reviewed evidence from the case. In that time, the rapper spent 18 months in jail.