Law Commentary - California Edition
With Partner Rihanna Watching From the Gallery, Rapper A$AP Rocky Found Not Guilty on Shooting Charges
After a three-week trial, and a jury taking only three hours to reach a verdict, Grammy-nominated performer and rising actor A$AP Rocky, 36, was found not guilty in the shooting of a former musical collaborator. The case was highly sensational due in part to the fact that the rapper’s partner is Rihanna, a global superstar and the mother of their two young children.
If he had been found guilty, the musician would have faced up to 24 years in prison.
A$AP Rocky, aka Rakim Athelaston Mayers, was charged with two counts of felony assault with a deadly weapon related to a fight in 2021. The argument occurred in a W Hotel garage when Mayers and his former friend Terell Ephron, whose professional name is A$AP Relli, met. The ‘A$AP’ moniker is due to the performers being part of the same music collective, called A$AP, which means ‘always strive and prosper.’
The two hip-hop performers had been close friends since high school but had since had a negative relationship with one another. On the night of the shooting, November 6, 2021, they met to talk and reconcile, according to testimony Relli gave in court during the trial.
Relli alleged that Mayers did not arrive alone to the meeting that night, and instead showed up with two men: A$AP Twelvyy, born Jamel Da'Shawn Phillips, and A$AP Illz, born Illijah Ulanga.
In legal documents, it was alleged that Mayers had a gun and used it to shoot Relli. Prosecutors said a gun was used to shoot the victim, but no firearm was found. In contrast to the prosecutor’s claims that Mayers had a semiautomatic firearm, witnesses at the scene said that the defendant instead had a prop gun from a music video he had worked on at the time.
During the trial, in which Mayers did not testify, Relli told the court that he and Mayers had a disagreement but that it led to a heated confrontation. Relli said that Mayers retrieved a gun from his waistband and that he tried to hide behind Ulanga. It was then, Relli said in court documents, that Mayers allegedly fired a gun at him that grazed his right hand.
Prosecutors retrieved video footage of the shooting, which showed what looked like a firearm, but was found to be a prop gun, showing Mayers shooting toward Relli.
Describing the incident, Relli told the court, “The whole thing was like a movie, he kind of like pointed down and he shot the first shot.”
The jury heard from two witnesses in court that Mayers had only fired blanks from the prop gun, and that the rapper had been carrying the prop gun around for months, due to advice given him by a security adviser. One witness, Jamel Da'Shawn Phillips, said that Relli knew that the gun Mayers had was not a real gun and was actually a prop gun.
The defense successfully argued that Mayers used the prop gun because he wanted to defend his friend Illijah Ulanga from being physically attacked by Relli. The defense also told the court that Relli “exaggerated” the event so he would win a civil trial for damages that he had filed.
Los Angeles Police Sergeant Thomas Zizzo testified as one of the first officers to arrive on the scene. He told the court that it was “difficult” to tell if a crime had taken place.
Relli, disputing the sergeant’s testimony, told the court that though there was no evidence of a firearm on the scene, he did go back to the area later that night and retrieved two 9-millimeter shell casings. His attorney said that finding the gun was critical to the case, but that “Police failed to find the gun and that became the strongest point for the defense.”
Mayer’s defense attorney said that without evidence connecting his client to a crime, the jury could not convict him. “The evidence isn’t here in this case,” he said. “It’s not even close. No bullet holes, no blood, no damage and of course no shell casings” were found.
After the not-guilty verdict was read in court, Mayers dove euphorically into the crowd to hug his partner Rihanna, his two young children, his mother, and his attorney. He is schedule to appear in numerous concerts and events and will star with Denzel Washington in a Spike Lee film set to be released this summer.
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