A$AP Rocky’s lawyer is expected to finish delivering his closing argument Friday at the hip-hop star’s trial, where the defense is trying to persuade jurors that the former friend Rocky is charged with shooting at took the stand and “lied to you about so many crucial things.”
Closing arguments began Thursday, when Rocky’s longtime partner, the singing superstar Rihanna, walked quietly into the downtown Los Angeles courtroom after proceedings began, as she has several times during the three-week trial. She brought their two young sons.
Rocky’s lawyer Joe Tacopina reminded the jurors that their instructions allow them to disregard everything a witness says if the jurors believe they are being dishonest in any part of their testimony.
He told them if they do that with Rocky’s accuser, who goes by A$AP Relli, “there is no case.”
“This is a man whose tongue is a stranger to the truth,” Tacopina said. “The important facts he gave you turned out to be lies.”
Jurors are expected to begin deliberations on two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm after the defense finishes its closing and prosecutors offer a rebuttal.
In the prosecution’s closing argument, Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec told jurors they have “one critical question” to answer.
“Was it a real gun or was it a fake gun?” he said. “Nothing else is in dispute.”
He told jurors the “overwhelming evidence in this case is that it was a real gun” that Rocky fired on a Hollywood street corner on Nov. 6, 2021.
The defense says the gun was a prop that fires only blanks that Rocky took for security months earlier from the set of his music video for “DMB,” which featured Rihanna.
Rihanna held one of her sons on her lap and tried to keep him quiet with a toy as she watched. During a break, Rocky walked down the hall, past jurors, holding the younger boy.
Rocky could receive a sentence of up to 24 years in prison if convicted.
Rocky and Relli became friends in high school in New York. Both were members of a crew of creative types called the A$AP Mob.
Their friendship continued after Rocky gained global fame with No. 1 albums in 2012 and 2013, but by 2021 their bond had become a beef.
They met outside a Hollywood hotel and scuffled. In a second confrontation moments later, Rocky fired the shots. Relli said his knuckles were grazed by one of them.
Tacopina called the injury “knuckle scrapes.”
“There’s no bullet in the world that could’ve done that,” Tacopina said, showing jurors a picture of Relli’s hand.
A$AP Twelvyy, a friend who was with Rocky, testified that Rocky fired blanks from a prop gun that everyone involved knew he carried. His tour manager testified to the same. Both were clearly coached and coordinated, Przelomiec said.
“What they got on the stand and told you were lies,” he said.
Neither side produced a gun as evidence.
“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.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
