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A$AP Rocky Trial Closing Arguments: What Rihanna’s Court Appearance Meant

Prosecutors said the gun was real; A$AP Rocky’s defense said it was a prop. Rihanna brought sons RZA and Riot to court during closings, and jurors later acquitted Mayers of both felony counts.
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The central question in A$AP Rocky’s Los Angeles trial was whether the gun prosecutors said he fired during a 2021 confrontation was real or a prop. At closing arguments on February 13–14, 2025, prosecutors said it was real; the defense said it came from a music-video set and fired blanks. Rihanna brought their sons RZA and Riot to court on February 13, a reported courtroom event that drew comment from the prosecution but does not establish why she brought them.

What the closing arguments were about

Rakim Athelaston Mayers, known as A$AP Rocky, faced two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm over a November 6, 2021 confrontation in Hollywood with former friend Terell Ephron. The closing arguments took place in Los Angeles on February 13 and 14, 2025. The prosecution and defense offered sharply different accounts of the gun and the encounter.

The prosecution’s account

Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec framed the dispute this way: “Was it a real gun or was it a fake gun?” He also told jurors, “Nothing else is in dispute.” Those were the prosecutor’s characterizations, not neutral findings. Prosecutors argued that Mayers fired a real semiautomatic firearm at Ephron and was guilty of both counts.

The defense’s account

The defense said the gun was a prop taken from the set of Mayers’s “DMB” music video and fired blanks. Defense attorney Joe Tacopina challenged Ephron’s credibility, calling him “an angry pathological liar” who “committed perjury again and again and again and again.” Those were allegations made by defense counsel, not findings that Ephron had lied under oath.

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The defense also argued that Ephron was the aggressor. Reuters’s account of the verdict later described Ephron as reporting a minor injury to his knuckles and referred to two confrontations on November 6, 2021. The accounts of the incident and the gun’s nature remained disputed at trial.

Why Rihanna’s sons were in court

Rihanna had attended portions of the trial. On February 13, she brought the couple’s sons, RZA and Riot, to the courtroom; the Associated Press reported they were two and one years old at the time. Rihanna attended the next day without the children, according to the Guardian’s account.

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During closing arguments, prosecutor John Lewin asked jurors to set aside any feelings of sympathy for the family and questioned why children that young were present. That was a prosecution argument. The reported coverage establishes that Rihanna brought the boys to court, but it does not establish her reason or that the appearance was intended to influence the jury.

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What the jury decided

On February 18, 2025, the jury acquitted Mayers of both felony counts. The verdict resolved the criminal charges against him; it should not be read as a finding about every disputed detail of the 2021 encounter. After the acquittal, Reuters reported that Mayers told jurors, “Thank y’all for saving my life.”

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Reuters also reported that Ephron had filed a separate civil lawsuit. Its status and outcome are not established here, and it is distinct from the criminal trial and its verdict.

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