The trial of rapper A$AP Rocky is progressing according to standard legal procedure, but there have been no lack of unusual moments, from visits from Rihanna to a tough-but-quirky judge and lawyers nearly coming to blows.
Testimony is expected to last another week before jurors will decide Rocky’s fate on two counts of assault with a semi-automatic firearm. A conviction could lead to up to 24 years in prison for the hip-hop star.
Here are some of the out-of-the-ordinary moments from the first two weeks of the trial, most not captured by the cameras in the courtroom.
Waiting for Rihanna
From the moment it became clear the case was going to trial, nearly everyone involved was asking the same thing: What about Rihanna?
Editors asked it of reporters, who asked it of lawyers. Even Judge Mark Arnold asked it months ago at a hearing: “Will the mother of his children be there?”
Her name came up constantly during jury selection, when prospective panelists were asked whether her attendance would affect their judgment.
Yet when the singing superstar finally did show up, she was easy to miss.
She didn’t appear through the first week, but rumors abounded Wednesday that she might appear, on a short court day with important testimony. Yet there was no sign of her outside or in the halls. (Unlike a nearby civil courthouse, where celebrities like Britney Spears and the Kardashians are smuggled in, Rocky and other defendants must use public entrances and many thought she’d accompany him.)
When the media were allowed in the courtroom, many reporters walked past her without noticing she was already sitting inconspicuously between Rocky’s mother and sister. She had been brought in through restricted entrances. She could barely be seen from the media section, and the camera capturing the trial is not allowed to shoot the audience.
Her presence caused a quiet stir once the audience realized it, though it’s not clear if the jurors had noticed her.
She appeared again the next day, and it soon felt almost unexceptional that she was there. By Friday, she slipped in about 30 minutes into testimony after coming through a public entrance.
Later that day she entered the courtroom together with Rocky for the first time, down a hallway full of jurors from his and other cases that was abuzz.
Attorneys in the octagon
Court observers knew that when Deputy District Attorney John Lewin joined the prosecution shortly before trial, that he and Rocky’s equally bullish and vocal attorney, Joe Tacopina, were sure to butt heads. They weren’t wrong.
Lewin, a dogged prosecutor, is best known for his successful murder prosecution of real estate heir Robert Durst. Tacopina is a New York attorney and frequent TV commentator whose clients have included President Donald Trump.
Their shouting matches began quickly. Soon, without judge or jury present, the two had to be separated by a fellow lawyer when they went nose-to-nose in a faceoff that looked like it might become a fistfight.
“Mr. Tacopina started literally screaming at me in the courtroom. He basically appeared to challenge me to a fight,” Lewin told the judge later.
Tacopina responded. “No one screamed. You weren’t there your honor. Mr. Lewin comes up with his little scolding, bullying attitude.”
Arnold, a former sheriff’s deputy, forbade the two from talking to each other except on the record.
Moments later, he said a UFC fight might be warranted. “Maybe we should get an octagon.”
Arnold wasn’t wrong either. An even more fierce fight broke out between the two men in front of the judge but off camera a few days later as they argued over evidence. Lewin shouted that the defense assertion Rocky was carrying a prop gun was “garbage.”
“Oh?! Oh?!” Tacopina yelled. “We’ll see what the jury says at the end!”
“The argument grew more out of control and turned to personal insults.
“You don’t know me! But you will learn!” Tacopina yelled.
The judge, disgusted, refused to keep playing referee.
“That’s it, we’re off the record,” he said, and walked out.
The quirks of the key witness
The testimony of A$AP Relli, Rocky’s accuser, was dark and difficult but brought a couple of oddly light moments.
At one point, Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec asked him how far away Rocky was at a certain moment.
“About three or four skips,” Relli said.
“I’ve never heard about anyone estimating with skips,” Przelomiec said.
“Wait, what does a skip mean?” the judge asked.
“You don’t know what I mean?” Relli asked.
They determined for the record that it was about 7 to 8 feet.
Arnold’s long-for-a-judge hair and rugged, bushy mustache evoke a biker, or a cowboy. His nameplate on the bench is a carved wooden log. Relli let him know he liked his style.
As he testified, Arnold told him he clearly had to say “yes” or “no” for the court reporter.
Relli said sorry, he was nervous, then looking at the judge said, “I like your bracelet.”
“What?” Arnold said.
Relli pointed at the silver wristband on the judge’s right arm. “Your bracelet.”
“Oh,” the judge said. “Thank you.”
A$AP’s mother and sister at the trial
Rocky’s mother, Renee Black, and his sister, Erika Mayers, garnered their own share of attention even before Rihanna sat between them.
The first day they appeared, Arnold asked Rocky who the women in his section were.
“That’s my mother and my sister,” Rocky said. The judge’s marveled at Black’s youthful appearance.
“What were you, 7 when you had him?” the judge asked. She said she was 26.
“You are very beautiful,” the judge told her. “That’s on the record.”
Later, Lewin politely approached the women and talked to them during a break. He said of Rocky, “I just hope he’s evaluating everything” in a reference to the deal Rocky turned down — a recommendation of 180 days in jail and other relatively minor punishments for a guilty plea on one count.
Tacopina angrily brought it up to the judge later, and Lewin explained himself.
“I walked up very kindly to the defendants mother and sister. I said ‘I am very sorry you have to go through this. I hope that your brother and your son, he’s really evaluated what he’s risking here.’”
The phantom photographer
During jury selection, when the room was packed with tired and seemingly bored potential jurors being questioned one after another, a woman gave everyone a start when she suddenly shouted, “There’s a woman taking a picture in that corner!”
She pointed to a door with a small window behind the judge, who pounced into action, his robe flying. He and his clerk opened the door and hurried down the hall behind it, but found no one.
The woman swore she saw someone and tried to justify herself, but Arnold cut her off.
“You did the right thing!” Arnold said. “You done good!”
They kept the window covered after that.