Rapper A$AP Rocky was found not guilty on Tuesday of firing a handgun at a former friend in Hollywood more than three years ago, avoiding what could’ve been a years-long prison term.
A jury in Los Angeles deliberated for only about three hours before clearing the musician of two felony counts of assault with a semi-automatic firearm.
The 36-year-old hip-hop star, fashion mogul and burgeoning actor — whose legal name is Rakim Mayers — would have faced up to 24 years in prison if convicted.
On the eve of trial, he turned down a prosecution offer of just six months in jail, along with probation and other conditions, if he would plead guilty to one count.
Insisting on his innocence, and with two young toddler sons at home along with his longtime partner Rihanna, Rocky decided to gamble that a jury would feel the same.
Rihanna brought children to closing arguments
When the verdict was read, Rihanna cried and hugged the defence lawyers. She attended the trial sporadically and brought the couple’s two sons — two-year-old RZA Athelston Mayers and one-year-old Riot Rose Mayers — for some of the closing arguments.
The verdict came at the height of Rocky’s fame, if not the pinnacle of his music career. The three-time Grammy nominee has a banner year in the works, and can now look to it without the threat of prison hanging over him.
He’s scheduled to headline the Rolling Loud music festival in March; he’ll be one of the celebrity co-chairs of fashion’s biggest night, the Met Gala, in May; and he co-stars with Denzel Washington in director Spike Lee’s film Highest 2 Lowest, set for release in early summer.
Prosecutors and their witnesses said that Rocky was beefing with a former friend, A$AP Relli. The two had been in a crew who called themselves the A$AP Mob since high school. They said the two men met up in Hollywood on Nov. 6, 2021, and after a scuffle Rocky pulled the gun and fired twice at Relli, who said one of the shots grazed his knuckle but that he was not seriously hurt.
Rocky’s lawyer Joe Tacopina said in his closing argument that Relli is “an angry pathological liar” who “committed perjury again and again and again and again.”
Gun was a prop, lawyers said
Rocky’s lawyers and the witnesses they called said Rocky had shot a prop gun that only fires blanks, which he had been carrying for security since taking it from a music video set months earlier. They said he fired it as a warning because Relli was attacking another member of their crew.
The jurors were told that despite three years passing since the incident, no one mentioned the phoney gun to authorities until the day jury selection began at the trial.
They were also instructed that if they found that Rocky reasonably believed that he or one of the two friends with him that night were in imminent danger of injury, and that he used reasonable force, they could find the defendant not guilty.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the jurors reached the verdict because they believed Rocky was in fact carrying a prop gun or because he acted in self-defence. They did not have to agree on their reasoning, or explain it outside of the jury room. They just had to reach the same conclusion.
Rocky opted not to testify in his own defence.
In his closing argument, Deputy District Attorney John Lewin urged the jurors not to be influenced by the celebrity or family aspects of the case, and suggested Rihanna bringing their children to closing arguments was an attempt to manipulate the jury.
“You are not allowed to consider how this might affect Rihanna and his kids,” the prosecutor said. “We are all responsible for our own actions in the world.”
