LOS ANGELES: With Rihanna and two toddlers looking on from the audience, a prosecutor at the Los Angeles trial of A$AP Rocky told jurors during his closing argument Thursday that they have “one critical question” to answer.
“Was it a real gun or was it a fake gun?” Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec said. “Nothing else is in dispute.”
The prosecutor said the hip-hop star fired at a former friend on a Hollywood street in 2021 and argued that Rocky was simply and undeniably guilty of two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm.
The defense, whose closing argument began Thursday afternoon, says the gun was a prop that fires only blanks and that Rocky took it from a music video set for security.
Rocky’s lawyer Joe Tacopina said the accuser, who is the key witness, is “an angry pathological liar” who “committed perjury again and again and again and again.”
Rocky, the Grammy-nominated music star, fashion mogul and actor whose legal name is Rakim Athelaston Mayers, is the longtime partner of the singing superstar Rihanna, who has attended the trial sporadically. For the first time, she brought the two sons they have together — 2-year-old RZA Athelston Mayers and 1-year-old Riot Rose Mayers — entering the courtroom quietly but dramatically a few minutes into the prosecutor’s presentation.
The boys, wearing suits, could be heard cooing as a prosecutor talked. Rihanna held one on her lap and tried to keep him quiet with a toy. During a break, Rocky walked down the hall, past jurors, holding the younger boy. Rihanna returned to court after the lunch break without the children.
Jurors will likely begin deliberating on Friday. Rocky could get up to 24 years in prison if convicted.
The jurors are not supposed to be aware of the possible sentence. But during testimony, Rocky’s tour manager, Lou Levin, said, “I read that he was facing 24 years,” after a prosecutor hounded him about whether he wanted to see his friend and sometime boss convicted.
The judge told the jury to disregard the statement. In his closing, Przelomiec said it was intentional.
“It’s interesting that Lou blurts that out when he’s not asked a question about that,” he said. “That’s clear evidence that Lou is trying to get out information to you that he thinks is prejudicial.”
Testimony ended Tuesday, when Rocky and his lawyers told a judge he would not take the stand.
The prosecution’s case rests largely on the credibility of the man Rocky is alleged to have fired on. A$AP Relli, whose legal name is Terell Ephron, became friends with Rocky in high school in New York. Both were members of a crew of creative types called the A$AP Mob.
Their friendship continued after Rocky gained global fame with No. 1 albums in 2012 and 2013, but by Nov. 6, 2021, their bond had become a beef.
They met up outside a Hollywood hotel, and scuffled once they saw each other. In a second confrontation moments later, Rocky fired the shots. Relli said his knuckles were grazed by one of them.
A$AP Twelvyy, who was with Rocky, testified that Relli was the aggressor, and that Rocky fired the shots as a warning to stop him from attacking another member of their crew.
Twelvyy testified that Rocky fired blanks from the prop gun that the rapper had been carrying for security for months, and that everyone involved knew it. Levin testified to the same. Both were clearly coached and coordinated, Przelomiec said.
“What they got on the stand and told you were lies,” he told jurors.
Neither side produced a gun as evidence. Despite more than three years passing, the defense didn’t say the gun was fake until the beginning of trial, which Przelomiec said “defies all reason.”
“There is literally no evidence of a prop gun,” the prosecutor said.
Tacopina countered that “there’s definitely a lot less evidence of a real gun.”
Relli also sued Rocky, and Rocky’s attorneys are casting him as a jealous opportunist. In text messages and in phone calls recorded by a mutual friend, Relli said he was going to take Rocky for millions.
Relli testified the calls were faked, but the prosecution played long excerpts during closings to point out that what Relli said on them was “exactly what he told you here in court.”
“Mr. Ephron wants to get paid,” Przelomiec said, “because he was the victim of a real crime by a real gun.”
Tacopina said the prosecution didn’t remotely prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
“They have not met their burden here,” he said. “Not even close. Because they can’t.”