LOS ANGELES (news agencies) — There’s one essential difference between the two closing arguments at rapper A$news agencies Rocky ‘s trial: Prosecutors said Thursday that the hip-hop star fired two shots at a former friend from a handgun. Defense lawyers will say he fired blanks from a gun that wasn’t real.
The Grammy-nominated music star, fashion mogul and actor is the longtime partner of singing superstar Rihanna, who entered the courtroom a few minutes into closing arguments. For the first time she brought their two toddler sons with her. They were dressed in suits and could be heard making cooing noises as a prosecutor talked.
“There is one critical question you have to answer,” Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec told the Los Angeles jurors. “Was it a real gun or was it a fake gun?” he said. “Nothing else is in dispute.”
The closings will likely last into Friday, when jurors should begin deliberating on two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm for the 2021 shooting. If they convict Rocky of both, he could get up to 24 years in prison.
Testimony ended Tuesday, when Rocky and his lawyers told a judge he would not take the stand.
The prosecution’s case rests largely on the credibility of the man Rocky is alleged to have fired on. A$news agencies Relli, whose legal name is Terell Ephron, became friends with Rocky, born Rakim Mayers, in high school in New York, where both were members of a crew of creative types called the A$news agencies Mob.
Their friendship continued after Rocky gained global fame with a pair of No. 1 albums in 2012 and 2013, but by Nov. 6, 2021 their bond had become a beef.
They met up outside a Hollywood hotel, and scuffled once they saw each other. In a second confrontation moments later, Rocky fired the shots. Relli said his knuckles were grazed by one of them. The fights were partially captured on surveillance videos that are not clear enough for easy interpretation.
A$news agencies 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 a starter pistol that the rapper had been carrying for security since a music video shoot months earlier, and that everyone involved knew it. Rocky’s tour manager also testified that he carried the phony gun.
Prosecutors argued that the whole idea of the prop gun is a preposterous lie coordinated by Rocky’s inner circle.
Przelomiec zeroed in on Twelvyy.
“This sounds like a man who is giving preprogrammed answers,” he told the jurors. “I don’t have to tell you he was being coached.”
Neither gun was found or presented as evidence.
Police who searched the area after a report of a shooting found no physical evidence, but Relli went to a police department two days later with two shell casings he said he’d picked up after returning to the scene.
In closing arguments, the defense will contend that video evidence and text messages can’t be trusted, nor can Relli. He also filed a lawsuit in the case, 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 in text messages and in phone calls recorded by a mutual friend who gave the recordings to Rocky. Relli said in his testimony that the calls were faked.
The prosecution argued that Relli is justly seeking money after a genuine wrong was done to him. They pointed out during trial that Relli’s communications around the encounter tell a consistent story — and never does he mention making anything up or knowing Rocky carried a prop gun.
The jurors were instructed that if they found that Rocky reasonably believed that he or any of those with him that night were in imminent danger of injury, and that he used reasonable force, they could find him not guilty even if they did not believe the prop gun story.
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