By Andrew Dalton
Rapper A$AP Rocky was found not guilty on Tuesday (US time) of firing a handgun at a former friend on a Hollywood street in 2021.
“Thank y’all for saving my life,” he told jurors as they left the Los Angeles courtroom. They cleared him of two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm.
A$AP Rocky in court earlier in his trial, before he was acquitted.Credit: AP
After the verdict was read, the 36-year-old hip-hop star, fashion mogul and actor – whose legal name is Rakim Mayers – dived into the gallery to hug partner Rihanna.
He faced 24 years in prison if he had been convicted, after turning down a prosecution offer of just six months in jail, and other conditions, to plead guilty to one count.
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 glory belongs to God and God alone!” Rihanna wrote in an Instagram Story after the verdict. “Thankful, humbled by his mercy!”
Rihanna outside the court where her partner A$AP Rocky was being tried.Credit: AP
The verdict comes at the height of Rocky’s fame. The three-time Grammy nominee will headline the Rolling Loud music festival in March, is one of the celebrity co-chairs of the Met Gala in May and will star with Denzel Washington in director Spike Lee’s film Highest 2 Lowest.
Prosecutors said he was “beefing” with a former friend, A$AP Relli, with whom he had been in a crew who called themselves the A$AP Mob since high school. They said the pair met up in Hollywood on November 6, 2021, and after a scuffle Rocky pulled the gun and fired twice at Relli, who was not seriously hurt.
Rocky’s lawyer Joe Tacopina said in his closing argument that Relli is “an angry pathological liar” who “committed perjury again and again and again and again”.
Rocky’s lawyers and witnesses said Rocky had shot a prop gun that only fires blanks, which he had been carrying for security since taking it from a music video. They said he fired it as a warning because Relli was attacking another member of their crew.
Rihanna with A$AP Rocky at an event in New York in December last year.Credit: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
The jurors were told that, despite three years passing since the incident, no one mentioned the phoney gun to authorities until jury selection began.
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 him not guilty.
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 the 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.”
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