[Trending News] The Strangest Details From A$AP Rocky’s Felony Trial

Going on week two, A$AP Rocky’s trial in Los Angeles is shaping up to be music-video-ready. The rapper and future Met Gala host is fighting a felony assault charge from 2021, when he allegedly fired a gun directed at a former friend, A$AP Relli (real name Terell Ephron). Rocky (real name Rakim Mayers) entered a “not guilty” plea, letting the trial play out in court in front of a jury and his partner and mother of his children, Rihanna. Rocky’s not-guilty plea for the two counts of felony assault with a semi-automatic firearm comes from his defense that it was a prop weapon and no bullets were discharged.

But that’s not even the most dramatic part: There have been allegations of AI-manipulated messages, testimony from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’s Erika Jayne’s son (he’s a cop!), speculation of a President Trump pardon, and a Johnny Depp connection. (There is also a significant Depp connection to the other big Hollywood trial right now between the It Ends With Us cast.) Rocky is facing a maximum sentence of 24 years. Here’s everything you’ve missed in the trial so far.

A$AP Rocky is facing two counts of assault with a semi-automatic firearm after a street fight with his former friend and crew member A$AP Relli. The altercation occurred on November 6, 2021, in the heart of Hollywood. The Los Angeles district attorney alleged that during that fight, Rocky drew a semi-automatic weapon and fired twice in Relli’s direction. Rocky has maintained that he was only holding a prop gun.

Rocky’s attorney Joe Tacopina said that his client turned down a plea deal because the evidence will show that Rocky held “nothing more than a prop gun” and that “all of Rocky’s friends knew that Rocky carried a prop gun.”

“Yes, he was offered a plea deal but is not interested because he is actually innocent,” Tacopina told ABC News. “The terms were 180 days in jail, three years’ probation, and a few other minor conditions on a plea to an assault with a gun charge.”

Tacopina said Rocky was advised by his security team to carry the prop gun because he was the victim of a stalker. He said Rocky received the prop gun a few months earlier when he was with Rihanna shooting a video.

The prop-gun defense seemed strange enough until Relli testified that recordings of him played at trial were fake and generated by AI. The recordings in question allegedly insinuate that if Rocky paid Relli off, he would not testify as a witness.

“If I’m not there, he pays me out from my lawsuit, I’ll walk away, basically …I’ll go to an island relaxing, you get what I’m sayin’, they are going to be scrambling to find me because now they have to go against Rocky, the state, and if they have evidence but it’s not going to be the same when you present it to the jury and you don’t have a compliant witness,” according to the recordings played in court.

Wally Sajimi, a social-media consultant, took the stand to deny that the recordings were doctored. He testified that he personally made the recordings with Relli and insisted the recordings were not altered.

“They’re real,” Sajimi said on the stand.

New York attorney Joe Tacopina, representing Rocky, once served as part of President Donald Trump’s legal team during his criminal hush-money trial and for an appeal of the civil case brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll.

Relli retained Johnny Depp’s former trial attorneys, Camille Vasquez and Benjamin Chew, to represent him in his $30 million civil-defamation lawsuit that he filed against both Rocky and Tacopina. Vasquez and Chew won Depp’s suit over his former partner Amber Heard.

LAPD sergeant Thomas Zizzo might be the most random celebrity cameo in the mix. He is Erika Jayne’s son; he was working as a Hollywood patrol officer and was one of the first responders on the night of the alleged assault. Zizzo testified that he had a hard time determining if a crime had even taken place when he arrived that night because there were no suspects, no victims, and no apparent damage from a shooting.

“When we get there, we work with what we got, not with what we like,” Zizzo said.

The mother of two of Rocky’s children came to court to support Rocky on three separate days so far, sitting next to Rocky’s mother, according to the AP.

Rocky has an additional incentive to avoid jail time. Not only is he headlining the 2025 Rolling Loud California festival with Playboi Carti that is set to take place March 15–16 in Hollywood, but he is also one of the co-chairs of the upcoming 2025 Met Gala along with Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, Pharrell William, and the gala’s chair, LeBron James. Rocky, whose trial outfits have included Saint Laurent suits and a Gucci cashmere coat, is known for his sleek tailored style, and he will be part of the Met Gala’s event focusing on “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” He also is starring in Highest 2 Lowest, a film by Spike Lee starring Denzel Washington that is slated to be released in theaters this summer, in addition to the Sundance favorite If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, which will likely be released later this year.

The trial, which began on January 24, was initially expected to last 15 court days, potentially wrapping this week. The case could go to the jury as early as this week.

In the event he is found guilty by the jury, it would be up to the judge to determine whether Rocky would serve jail time. Kate Mangels, a criminal defense expert attorney and partner at Los Angeles firm Kinsella Holley Iser Kump Steinsapir, said the judge would take into account Rocky’s criminal history (Rocky was found guilty of a 2019 assault in Sweden for his part in a street fight but was given a suspended sentence after he left the country) and whether he was considered the aggressor of the incident.

“There is a wide range of possible options for sentencing, which is largely up to the discretion of the court,” Mangels said. “The jury does not participate in sentencing decisions.”

Despite the fact that Rocky turned down a plea deal before trial, Mangels said the DA could reoffer the deal, with the same or with different terms, anytime prior to the jury reaching a verdict.

When Rocky was arrested in Sweden in 2019 and charged with assault after he and members of his entourage fought with a pair of men in the street, President Trump stepped in, sending over a special envoy for hostage affairs and insisting on his release.  Rocky spent almost a month in jail before he was eventually let out. “A$AP Rocky released from prison and on his way home to the United States from Sweden. It was a Rocky Week, get home ASAP A$AP!” President Trump posted on X after his intervention. Rocky was later found guilty but was given a suspended sentence.

But Trump won’t be able to use his powers if Rocky is convicted in this case because he has been charged in a state court, and a president does not have the power to pardon state crimes, Mangels said. The White House has not responded to Vulture’s request for comment.