On Thursday, the prosecutors of Los Angeles County concluded their presentation of evidence in the trial of renowned rapper and fashion entrepreneur A$AP Rocky, who faces charges for discharging a firearm at a former companion on a Hollywood street in 2021. Over the course of eight days, they called upon five witnesses, encompassing two police officers, a detective, and a firearms expert. However, the most pivotal witness, by a wide margin, was the accuser himself – Rocky's estranged, aspiring music manager friend known as A$AP Relli. Relli spent approximately three days on the witness stand, enduring a lengthy and contentious cross-examination.
"You think you're clever!" he exclaimed, addressing defense attorney Joe Tacopina in a heated exchange. "You won't keep tripping me up! You're not clever!" Relli recounted that after their friendship soured into a bitter dispute, he and Rocky had a confrontation in Hollywood, culminating in Rocky firing two shots at him. Although he claimed his knuckles were grazed, he sustained no other injuries.
Rocky has pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm. If convicted on both counts, he faces a potential sentence of up to 24 years in prison.
Rihanna, the superstar singer who is Rocky's long-time partner and the mother of their young sons, quietly entered the courtroom on Thursday afternoon and took a seat in Rocky's section after several days of absence. She wore her hair up, glasses, and a tan trench coat on a rainy day in LA. She had been present in the courtroom for three days during Relli's testimony last week.
The defense team will now begin presenting their witnesses. On Friday, A$AP Twelvyy, a member of Rocky and Relli's A$AP Mob crew who was present at the scene, will be the first to testify. This group of friends and creators dates back nearly 20 years to their high school days in New York.
The defense has yet to disclose whether Rocky will take the considerable risk of testifying himself, which he is not legally obligated to do. He already took a significant gamble by declining the prosecution's pre-trial offer of a recommended sentence of just 180 days in jail and other relatively minor penalties in exchange for pleading guilty to one count.
His tour manager, Lou Levin, will be the second defense witness to testify. Raised in Harlem, the Grammy-nominated artist achieved mainstream success when his first studio album topped the Billboard 200 chart in 2013.
Yet, his persona as a fashion icon has nearly overshadowed his musical endeavors. He is poised to co-host the grandest evening in fashion, the Met Gala, in May. The tailored suits he sports within the courtroom and the stylish overcoats he dons outside have sparked countless conversations and even earned him a feature in the New York Times, delving into his unique sense of style. A public relations officer from Yves Saint Laurent dispatched a press release, typically reserved for red carpet occasions, detailing how he was adorned in an “Yves jacket crafted from wool chine,” a “shirt in exquisite silk crepe de chine,” and “high-waisted pants made of wool chine” during one of his court appearances.
His fashion acumen even made an unexpected appearance in court through phone recordings, where a voice claiming to be Relli asserted that Rocky was “no true gangster” and remarked, “this is a Dior scenario.” These recordings, alongside others, were presented by a witness whom the defense had the liberty to summon early on. Wally Sajimi, an internet branding consultant who had collaborated with both Rocky and Relli, had recorded conversations with Relli in 2022 and traveled from Paris to Los Angeles to testify in court.
Sajimi's testimony and these recordings could hold immense significance, as Relli had declared his intention to secure millions from Rocky in a separate civil matter, indicating his indifference towards the criminal proceedings. The defense played these recordings solely for Relli to hear as he sat on the witness stand, but he angrily denounced them as fakes, preventing the jury from hearing them. However, the presence of Sajimi, who had recorded and furnished them to Rocky, allowed the court to play them aloud, thus bringing a fresh dimension to the proceedings.
In one instance, a voice echoing that of Relli declared that suing Rocky had been "my master plan from the very beginning," adding, "Once I'm out of here with my money, the case will lose all its steam." However, during cross-examination, Deputy District Attorney John Lewin skillfully unveiled the coherence between Relli's narratives during those calls and his court testimony. He inquired, "Did he ever confess to you, at any moment, saying, 'You know what? I'm indeed after his money, but I fabricated the whole ordeal?'" Sajimi responded in the negative.
"In reality," Lewin persisted, pointing directly at Rocky, "wasn't he conveying to you that this man shot at him, and Relli was determined to seek justice for what transpired?" The witness's testimony served as a miniature representation of the entire case, with the verdict hanging on a delicate balance—how credible they deemed Relli's accounts of the incident, his potential dishonesty concerning other details like the calls, and whether his motive for money tarnished his credibility, as the defense vigorously contended.
Thursday dawned with the lead detective in the case taking the stand. LAPD Detective Frank Flores, under rigorous questioning from the defense, conceded that the surveillance footage capturing the incident lacked clear evidence of a functional firearm or a shooting in isolation.Despite this, Flores stressed, highlighting the behavior of the individuals depicted in the video, coupled with another footage capturing the audio of gunshots and others depicting the men before and after the incident, collectively pointed towards the occurrence of a shooting.
The defense did not refute the happening of some form of the incident but contended that Rocky had discharged a starter pistol loaded with blanks, which he carried for security purposes. When pressed on whether he could conclusively ascertain the presence of gunshots, Flores noted that the audio provided "the unmistakable sound of a firearm, or possibly some sort of replica firearm."
