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ASAP Rocky's defense attorney Joe Tacopina did not take kindly to people who suggested Rihanna brought their children to court to illicit sympathy from the jury.
Criminal defense lawyer Joe Tacopina, who represented Rocky in his assault with a semiautomatic firearm case, sat down for an interview on The Breakfast Club and shot down people who criticized Rihanna for bringing her children with her on the last day of the trial. "One day Rihanna brought the babies to court, and people were thinking it was a ploy," he said, as seen at the 2:15 point of the interview above. "Like, some sort of maneuver to get the jury to feel sympathy. The jury’s not feeling sympathy, they know he has a wife and kids."
Tacopina explained that Rihanna, who is the mother of the rapper's two children, brought them along with her in case Rocky was found guilty.
"It was more because it was the last day of the trial—we were summing up, doing summations—and the judge said we’re going right into jury deliberations after that. At least, that was the plan, it didn’t work out that way," he continued. "She brought them to court because that could have been the last time he’d seen his kids for a decade or more that day. That’s why she brought them. The prosecutor made a big deal of it in his summation, which I thought was a fatal mistake, quite frankly."
Rocky was facing as many as 24 years behind bars if convicted of the charges against him. Rocky was found not guilty of two felony counts at the trial earlier this month. He was accused of assaulting his former friend and collaborator, Terell Ephron aka ASAP Relli, in an alleged shooting outside a hotel in Hollywood in 2021. Rocky and his defense rejected a plea deal in the case, which would have seen him spend 180 days in jail followed by a seven-year suspended sentence, and three years of probation.
Tacopina said it was an easy choice to reject the plea deal, and revealed they only spoke about the deal for a minute at most.
"Me and Rocky had a one-minute conversation, literally, one minute. Rocky [was like], ‘I don’t wanna do jail, what do you think?' ‘Fuck ‘em, let’s go,'" he shared around the 6:00 point of the chat. "We thought about it for a second, but it required him to plead guilty to something he didn’t do. It required him to say, ‘I’m guilty of assault with a semi-automatic weapon.’ ... It [would have been] a career-ender for him."
Check out the full interview up top.
English (US) ·