Lawyer questions police's motive behind arrest
by Gil Kaufman –MTV News

Lil Wayne was arraigned late Monday on a felony charge of gun-possession in connection with his arrest Sunday night following his first headlining New York show.

According to attorney Stacey Richman, Wayne (born Dwayne Carter Jr.) was released Monday evening on $70,000 bond and will appear in court again in November on the charge, which carries a minimum prison sentence of three and a half. Richman said the arrest — and another one just hours before of Ja Rule on similar gun-possession charges was puzzling to her.

"He [Wayne] was in the bus in his boxer shorts with a number of other people," Richman told MTV News. "Unless his boxer shorts had a pocket for this gun, I don't understand how he had it on him."

Though some reports have quoted prosecutors describing a scenario in which Wayne tossed a bag containing the .40-caliber pistol as police entered the bus, Richman said her numerous witness interviews have not confirmed that version of events.

Several hip-hop artists who joined Lil Wayne onstage Sunday night had run-ins with the police and Beacon Theatre security outside the venue prior to the show. Richman's father and legal partner, famed hip-hop attorney Murray Richman, claimed the arrest was a result of an action by New York's police-detective "hip-hop squad," which "staked out the [tour] bus." Murray Richman added that the .40-caliber gun police found in the bus was in the same area in which Wayne was changing clothes and was a legally registered handgun, but did not belong to the rapper. More puzzling to the attorneys is why the other 12 to 20 people on the bus were not arrested along with Wayne, given New York laws that require that everyone in a vehicle with an unclaimed gun be charged if that vehicle is searched by police.