LOS ANGELES – Los Angeles County prosecutors rested their case Thursday on the trial of rapper and style mogul A$AP Rocky, who’s charged with firing a gun at a former pal on a Hollywood road in 2021.
They referred to as 5 witnesses in eight days of testimony, together with two law enforcement officials, a police detective and a firearms professional.
However their most vital witness by far was the accuser himself, Rocky’s previous pal, an aspiring music supervisor who goes by A$AP Relli. He was on the stand for about three days’ value of testimony, together with an extended and combative cross-examination.
“You think you’re slick!” he shouted at protection lawyer Joe Tacopina in a typical change. “You’re not going to maintain 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 photographs at him. He says his knuckles have been grazed, however he was in any other case not damage.
Rocky has pleaded not responsible to 2 felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, and if convicted on each can legally rise up to 24 years in jail.
Rihanna, the famous person singer who’s Rocky’s longtime accomplice and the mom of his 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 in the courtroom for 3 days throughout Relli’s testimony final week.
The protection will now start calling witnesses. They’re anticipated to incorporate two different members of Rocky and Relli’s A$AP Mob crew who have been on the scene, A$AP Twelvyy and A$AP Illz. The group of mates and creators dates again to highschool in New York practically 20 years in the past.
The protection has not stated 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 major danger by turning down the prosecution’s pre-trial supply of a really useful sentence of simply 180 days in jail and different comparatively minor penalties in change for a responsible plea on one depend.
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 style maven has nearly eclipsed his music. He’s set to be a star co-host on style’s largest night time, the Met Gala, in Could.
The fits he wears within the courtroom and the overcoats he wears exterior it have change into fodder for dialogue, and impressed a New York Times story on his type.
A publicist for Yves Saint Laurent despatched a brand new launch, of the sort normally reserved for purple carpets, saying that in the future in courtroom he was carrying an “Yves jacket in wool chine,” a ”shirt in silk crepe de chine” and “high-waisted pants in wool chine.”
His style 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 real gangster,” and that “that 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 hundreds of thousands from Rocky in a separate civil case and did not care concerning the felony prosecution. The protection performed them for under Relli to listen to as he sat within the witness stand, and he angrily declared them faux, 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 alongside,” and “As soon as I stroll away, once I get my money, the case will get method weaker.”
However in cross-examination, Deputy District Lawyer John Lewin established that the tales Relli was telling on the calls have been constant together with his testimony.
“Did he ever inform you at any time limit, ‘You recognize what? Yeah, I’m attempting to get his cash, however I made the entire thing up?” Lewin requested.
Sajimi stated no.
“The truth is, isn’t it true that what he was telling you was that that man shot at him,” Lewin stated, pointing at Rocky, “and Relli wished to verify he received his for what occurred?”
The witness’s testimony was a microcosm of your complete case. The decision might rely on how a lot weight they offer to Relli’s descriptions of the incident, his doable dishonesty about different components just like the calls, and whether or not they assume his searching for 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 beneath protection questioning {that a} surveillance video that captured the incident doesn’t present an working gun, or show there was a capturing in itself.
However Flores stated the conduct 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 capturing.
The protection does not really 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 stated the audio offered “the distinct sound of a firearm, or ”some some form of duplicate firearm doubtlessly.”
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