LOS ANGELES (AP) — 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.
Defense lawyers, who will begin their closing argument later Thursday, say the gun was a prop that fires only blanks and that Rocky took it from a music video set for security.
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. But for the first time Thursday, 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.
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, born Rakim Mayers, 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, another member of the crew 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, and 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.
In its closing arguments, the defense will contend that video evidence and text messages can't be trusted, nor can Relli. He also sued Rocky in civil court, and Rocky's attorneys will cast him as a jealous opportunist out for the money of a former friend who became famous. Relli vowed to do just that, saying he was going to take Rocky for millions in text messages and in phone calls recorded by a mutual friend who gave the recordings to Rocky.
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.”
Andrew Dalton, The Associated Press
