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The jury has declared American rapper A$AP Rocky as not guilty of charges of assault after a trial in Los Angeles concluded on Tuesday (Feb 18). The rapper had faced more than two decades in prison if he had been convicted of the alleged attack on a former friend in Hollywood in 2021.
The rapper, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, was seen hugging people in relief as the verdict was announced in the courtroom.
A$AP Rocky is in a relationship with Rihanna and the couple share two children together.
As the verdict was announced, Rihanna was seen screaming in glee as Rocky hugged her and sobbed.
Assault charges against A$AP Rocky
During the weeks-long trial, prosecutors said Mayers had shot a nine-millimetre semi-automatic weapon during a confrontation with Terell Ephron, also known as A$AP Relli, on November 6, 2021, in the heart of Hollywood, grazing Ephron's hand.
Mayers, 36, had insisted he had been carrying only a harmless prop gun.
The two had previously been friends, and were part of A$AP, a rap collective from New York, but fell out because other members of the group felt Mayers' commercial success had made him arrogant.
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Ephron told the jury he had been lured to a parking garage for an encounter that was partially caught on grainy surveillance video.
He claimed that after the two exchanged words, Mayers pulled a gun from his waistband, put it toward Relli's stomach and said, "I'll kill you right now."
Ephron said two bullets were fired, with one of them grazing his knuckles.
The rapper's attorney Joe Tacopina said the weapon was "absolutely nothing more than a prop gun... a starter gun, a blank gun, a fake gun. It's used in pop movies and music videos."
Neither side was able to produce the gun they said had been used on the night.
Extortion
Tacopina said the whole story of a shooting had been manufactured to extort money from A$AP Rocky.
Speaking after the verdict, Tacopina told reporters the jury had seen through the "mirage of a case. I've always said this was an extortion. The extortion played out live in court," he said.
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"The district attorney should look long and hard at prosecuting Terell Ephron."
Tacopina paid tribute to Mayers and Rihanna, whom he described as "the greatest people."
About A$AP Rocky
A$AP Rocky shot to fame in the first half of the last decade with two mega-selling albums: "Long. Live. A$AP" and "At. Long. Last. A$AP."
In 2019, he was given a suspended prison sentence in Sweden after a fight, in an affair that caused diplomatic tensions between Stockholm and Washington, pushing then-president Donald Trump to intervene.