LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles County prosecutors rested their case Thursday on the trial of rapper and trend mogul A$AP Rocky, who’s charged with firing a gun at a former pal on a Hollywood avenue in 2021.
They known as 5 witnesses in eight days of testimony, together with two cops, a police detective and a firearms skilled.
However their most vital witness by far was the accuser himself, Rocky’s outdated pal, an aspiring music supervisor who goes by A$AP Relli. He was on the stand for about three days’ price of testimony, together with a protracted and combative cross-examination.
“You think you’re slick!” he shouted at protection lawyer Joe Tacopina in a typical alternate. “You’re not going to keep tripping me up! You’re not slick!”
He testified that after their friendship faltered and grew right into a feud, he and Rocky had a confrontation in Hollywood that led to Rocky firing two pictures at him. He says his knuckles had been grazed, however he was in any other case not harm.
Rocky has pleaded not responsible to 2 felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, and if convicted on each can legally stand up to 24 years in jail.
Rihanna, the celebrity singer who’s Rocky’s longtime associate and the mom of their toddler sons, slipped into the courtroom Thursday afternoon and sat in Rocky’s part after a number of days of absence. She had her hair up and wore glasses with a tan trench coat on a wet day in LA. She was within the courtroom for 3 days throughout Relli’s testimony final week.
The protection will now start calling witnesses. First up Friday can be A$AP Twelvyy, a member of Rocky and Relli’s A$AP Mob crew who was on the scene. The group of mates and creators dates again to highschool in New York almost 20 years in the past.
The protection has not mentioned whether or not Rocky will take the appreciable danger of taking the stand himself, which he’s not legally required to do. He already opted to take a big danger by turning down the prosecution’s pre-trial supply of a beneficial sentence of simply 180 days in jail and different comparatively minor penalties in alternate for a responsible plea on one depend.
His tour supervisor Lou Levin would be the second protection witness.
Raised in Harlem, the Grammy nominee had his mainstream breakthrough when his first studio album went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2013.
However his function as a trend maven has virtually eclipsed his music. He’s set to be a celeb co-host on trend’s largest evening, the Met Gala, in Might.
The fits he wears within the courtroom and the overcoats he wears outdoors it have turn into fodder for dialogue, and impressed a New York Occasions story on his fashion.
A publicist for Yves Saint Laurent despatched a brand new launch, of the sort often reserved for purple carpets, saying that at some point in courtroom he was sporting an “Yves jacket in wool chine,” a ”shirt in silk crepe de chine” and “high-waisted pants in wool chine.”
His trend sense even got here up in telephone recordings performed in courtroom, throughout which an individual presupposed to be Relli declares that Rocky was “not a true gangster,” and that “this is the case of Dior.”
That telephone recording, and others, got here via a witness that the protection was allowed to name early. Wally Sajimi, an web branding marketing consultant who labored with each Rocky and Relli, recorded calls with Relli in 2022, and flew from Paris to Los Angeles to take the stand.
His testimony, and the calls might show pivotal, since Relli declares that he was going to get tens of millions from Rocky in a separate civil case and did not care concerning the legal prosecution. The protection performed them for less than Relli to listen to as he sat within the witness stand, and he angrily declared them pretend, which meant the jury could not hear them.
However the presence of Sajimi, who made the recordings and gave them to Rocky, allowed them to be performed aloud in courtroom.
On one, a voice resembling Relli’s says suing Rocky “was my gameplan all along,” and “As soon as I stroll away, once I get my money, the case will get approach weaker.”
However in cross-examination, Deputy District Legal professional John Lewin established that the tales Relli was telling on the calls had been constant together with his testimony.
“Did he ever inform you at any time limit, ‘You know what? Yeah, I’m attempting to get his cash, however I made the entire thing up?” Lewin requested.
Sajimi mentioned no.
“In fact, isn’t it true that what he was telling you was that that man shot at him,” Lewin said, pointing at Rocky, “and Relli wanted to make sure he got his for what happened?”
The witness’s testimony was a microcosm of the complete case. The decision might rely on how a lot weight they provide to Relli’s descriptions of the incident, his doable dishonesty about different parts just like the calls, and whether or not they assume his in search of cash undermines him, because the protection has gone to nice lengths to contend.
The lead detective within the case was on the stand when the day started Thursday.
LAPD Detective Frank Flores conceded below protection questioning {that a} surveillance video that captured the incident doesn’t present an working gun, or show there was a taking pictures in itself.
However Flores mentioned the habits of the lads within the video, mixed with one other that captured audio of gunshots, and others that confirmed the lads earlier than and after, result in the conclusion there was a taking pictures.
The protection would not truly dispute that some type of the incident occurred, however they are saying that Rocky fired a starter pistol that shoots blanks that he carries for safety.
When requested whether or not he might definitively set up there have been gunshots, Flores mentioned the audio supplied “the distinct sound of a firearm, or ”some some type of reproduction firearm probably.”
