A$AP Rocky returns to music, fashion and family with acquittal

LOS ANGELES (AP):

“Thank y’all for saving my life,” A$AP Rocky shouted to jurors as they left his trial.

Jurors quickly returned not guilty verdicts on Tuesday on two counts of felony assault with a semi-automatic handgun, sparing him a long prison sentence. Instead of leaving the Los Angeles courtroom in cuffs, the rapper leapt with joy into the lap of his superstar partner, Rihanna.

“There was a moment when, before we heard the words from the clerk, he didn’t know if he was going to be spending the next two decades in jail or going home,” his attorney, Joe Tacopina, said.

Rocky had a banner year of fame and glamour in the works that he can now freely embrace. In the same city as his acquittal, he is set to bask in the height of hip-hop as headliner of the Rolling Loud music festival next month. On the other coast, he’ll be at the height of fashion’s biggest night– the Met Gala – as a celebrity co-chair along with LeBron James and Pharrell Williams in May. And in summer, he adds major motion picture actor to his resume as the co-star – with Denzel Washington – in director Spike Lee’s film Highest 2 Lowest.

The trial arguably came at the height of his fame, if not the pinnacle of a music career that began with acclaim in his native New York and later led to a pair of No. 1 albums and three Grammy nominations.

It would have been very easy – and many would say smart – for him to have accepted a relatively generous pretrial offer: Just six months in jail, along with probation and other conditions, for a guilty plea to one count.

DECLINED A PLEA DEAL

He declined, and said bring it on to a three-week trial and the possibility of a prison sentence of up to 24 years and spending the foreseeable future away from Rihanna and their children, 2-year-old RZA Athelston Mayers and 1-year-old Riot Rose Mayers.

“He turned down a plea for almost no jail time because he was innocent,” Tacopina said. “They’re gonna move on. They have a lot of great things, professionally, going on. Rocky’s really at the height of his career. Rihanna’s on top of the world. They have two beautiful children. They have a family.”

Rocky and Rihanna pushed their way through a crush of photographers, reporters, YouTubers and fans to get into a waiting SUV.

“I’m thankful ... to be here right now, to be a free man talking to y’all,” he said with a smile. When the verdict was read a few minutes earlier, the courtroom full of fans exploded into screaming glee as Rocky jumped to where Rihanna sat with his mother and sister.

“Mr Mayers, you’re excused,” Judge Mark Arnold said moments later, with the post-trial hearings, appeals and sentencing now non-existent.

Rihanna had slipped into the courtroom after the rest of the audience was seated, as she did several times during the three-week trial, bringing their sons with her to closing arguments.

Rocky had been more than 30 minutes late for the reading of the verdict, and looked shaken and tense as he waited for it. Then came the verdict, the leap, and the release.

“I didn’t know how athletic he was,” Tacopina said. “That was raw emotion you guys got to see.”

Prosecutors and their witnesses said Rocky 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 two men met up in Hollywood on November 6, 2021, and after a scuffle that also included their high school mates A$AP Twelvyy and A$AP Illz, Rocky pulled the gun and fired twice at Relli, who said one of the shots grazed his knuckle but was not seriously hurt.

Rocky’s lawyers and 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 cast Relli as a lying opportunist who had only gone to the police because he was seeking Rocky’s money. He has filed a separate civil suit that is pending.

The jurors 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’s not clear which path to acquittal the jurors took in clearing him, only that they did not accept the prosecution’s case. They reached their unanimous conclusion in just three hours.