Judge asks about A$AP Rocky's and Rihanna's marital status as trial approaches
Rocky is due in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday for the first day of jury selection in his assault with a firearm trial.
A judge in Los Angeles on Wednesday finalized plans for rapper Rakim “A$AP Rocky” Mayer’s gun assault trial, which is scheduled to last three weeks.
Rocky was not in court, but he’s to appear at the main criminal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday for the start of jury selection.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark S. Arnold plans to ask potential jurors if they’re familiar with 36-year-old Rocky or megastar singer Rihanna, with whom he has two young children, and he asked a question Wednesday that sounded straight out of celebrity gossip circles: “Are they legally married?”
Rocky’s lawyer Joe Tacopina said he didn’t know but that they have two children together and Rihanna is his “common-law wife.”
“Just ‘wife’ is fine. However you'd like,” Tacopina said.
Arnold told Tacopina he’d call Rihanna “whatever you want me to call her,” but Deputy District Attorney John Lewin said she should only be called Rocky’s wife if she’s legally married to him.
“If they are legally married anywhere, she will be his wife. If they are not legally married anywhere, she is his significant other,” the judge said. He’ll decide for sure on Tuesday.
Rocky, whose hits include the 2019 smash “Praise the Lord,” is charged with two counts of first-degree assault with a firearm for a Nov. 6, 2021, confrontation in Hollywood with a now-former friend from high school, Terell “Relli” Ephron.
Surveillance video shows Rocky with what appears to be a gun as he and Relli push each other, and other videos track their movements to another area where investigators say Rocky fired shots. The actual shooting, however, is barely visible in a far corner of the video.
Relli testified in Rocky’s preliminary hearing in November 2023 that Rocky fired three or four shots one of which grazed three of his knuckles. He said the confrontation stemmed from an argument about Rocky’s promise to pay for a dead friend’s body to be flown home to New York. Rocky texted him on Nov. 6, 2021, and the men agreed on the phone to meet in person.
Tacopina doesn’t expect Rocky to take a plea deal, and he said Wednesday that prosecutors haven’t offered one. Lewin told Judge Arnold he wants to ensure Rocky knows what he’s facing.
“Given that the defendant, if he’s convicted, even at midterm, is looking at years in state prison with 2/3s time, we wanted to make sure that before he ends up going to trial, he understands what we would be asking,” Lewin said.
“I’ll do that on the record on Tuesday,” the judge said.
Tacopina told reporters on Wednesday that Relli is lying because he wants money from Rocky. He said he has no problems with the police investigation because officers didn’t find shell casings at the scene of the alleged shooting. Instead, Relli testified that he recovered them after he returned to the scene with his girlfriend.
“The police were very competent in this investigation,” Tacopina said. “I think they did a thorough search, and I think that if there were things there for them to find, they would have found it.”
Rocky was arrested in April 2022 at the Los Angeles airport as he returned from Barbados with Rihanna, and police raided the couple’s home in Los Angeles. He posted $550,000 bond and has been out of custody ever since. He’s traveled internationally, including meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris in January.
Relli, meanwhile, is suing Rocky and Tacopina for defamation, and he’s represented by Benjamin Chew and Camille Vasquez of Brown Rudnick LLP, the same lawyers who represented Johnny Depp in his defamation lawsuit against Amber Heard. Relli also has another lawsuit against Rocky for assault, battery, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
“I haven’t lost a minute’s sleep over that,” Tacopina said of Relli’s lawsuit against him. He said Relli “became a hater” and “just wants money. Lots of money. And if you got money, we wouldn’t all be sitting here right now.”
Tacopina said he’s not sure if Rocky will testify but “he’s eager to tell his story.”
“He would love the opportunity to do so. He's very articulate, very intelligent. That will come out if he testifies. But that decision has not been made yet. It depends on how the case goes,” Tacopina said.
Tacopina has been a licensed lawyer in New York since 1992. His former clients include rapper Meek Mill and President Donald Trump. He’s representing Rocky with his law partner, Chad Seigel, and Los Angeles-based attorney Sara Caplan.
Przelomiec, a licensed attorney in California since 2011, will prosecute Rocky with Lewin, who joined the case on Wednesday. Lewin has been a licensed attorney in California since 1991. He’s experienced in high-profile cases, including the trial of late real estate heir Robert Durst, who was convicted in January 2022 of murdering a longtime friend in Los Angeles in 2000.
Lewin told Judge Arnold on Wednesday he’ll wear hearing aids during jury selection that resemble headphones but “I’m not listening to whatever else is out there.”
Tacopina quipped, “A$AP Rocky has a new album coming out,” referring to Rocky’s new album “Don’t Be Dumb.”
Tacopina told reporters he’s unsure if Rihanna will attend the trial. Judge Arnold said in October that she’s “welcome to be here whenever she wants” and “if she wants to come, she can come.”
Tacopina said Wednesday Rocky “is very protective of Rihanna and doesn’t want her anywhere near this proceeding.”
“But that’s a family decision they’ll make,” Tacopina said.
Trial had been scheduled to begin in December, but Judge Arnold moved it to January in part because Rocky was performing at the Rolling Loud concert in Thailand.
Arnold got the case from Judge Karla Kerlin, who got the case after Judge Villar handled the two-day preliminary hearing and ruled enough evidence exists for Rocky to go to trial. Kerlin rejected a dismissal motion in August.
Arnold has been a superior court judge since Gov. Pete Wilson appointed him in 1998. He was a sheriff’s deputy for 13 years before he became a prosecutor for 13 years. A 2008 Daily Journal profile called him a “hard-charging police advocate;” a 2017 profile said he’s had a felony trial assignment every year he’s been on the bench.
The trial will run 10:30 a.m. to noon then 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m., Arnold said. Arnold said he’ll “let the jurors know that regardless of who a defendant is, whether they're the richest person in the world or the poorest person, everybody is to be treated the same.”
“Nobody is to be given brownie points or lose brownie points,” the judge said.
How to follow the trial
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You can watch video from the preliminary hearing here.
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