Former “Riverdale” actor and convicted murderer Ryan Grantham fears his baby face and small figure will make him a target of abuse from other inmates, his lawyer said Wednesday.
Grantham, 24, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for shooting his mother, Barbara White was sentenced to life in prison With the possibility of parole after 14 years.
The Canadian actor could be held in a maximum security prison with other killers – where he fears for his safety, his lawyer Chris Johnson told Fox News.
“When people plead guilty to a crime, it doesn’t mean they are saying, ‘Of course, I will be raped and abused by other prisoners. It is not part of the deal,” Johnson told the outlet.
The Vancouver-based criminal defense attorney said his client may be at greater risk in a maximum-security prison — an issue previously raised by the judge, who presided over Grantham’s case, he said.
According to Johnson, Justice Kathleen Kerr requested that corrections officers jail Grantham inside a medium-security prison, and not inside a maximum-security prison where most convicted murders are sent.
The former child actor, best known for his role in the movie “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”, “looks like a 17-year-old”, his lawyer said.
He said Grantham is just 5’2″ tall and weighs about 100 pounds.
“My biggest concern is that he will be hunted down by other prisoners and probably abused by them,” Johnson said. “We send people to jail for both punishment and rehabilitation. And so I expect the latter to be. We don’t send people to jail so that they can be punished by other prisoners.”
Corrections officers in Canada have jurisdiction where a person convicted of a crime and sentenced to prison, according to the attorney, serves time rather than in court.
Johnson told Fox News he plans to send a request this week to the prison director to request that Grantham be sent to a low-security prison.
The actor-turned-killer pleaded guilty to shooting his 64-year-old mother in the back of the head while playing the piano at the family home on March 31, 2020.
Grantham also admitted that he had planned to assassinate Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The day after his mother was murdered, he loaded a car with three guns, 12 Molotov cocktails and ammunition and headed towards Trudeau’s house.
He abandoned that plan after a few hours and considered shooting Simon Fraser University, where he was a student – but ultimately proved to be a police station and turned himself in for the murder of his mother.