ASAP Rocky’s lawyer Joe Tacopina pushed back hard against people who claimed Rihanna brought their kids to court just to get sympathy from the jury.
The criminal defense attorney, who defended Rocky in his assault with a semiautomatic firearm case, talked to The Breakfast Club and dismissed critics who slammed Rihanna for bringing their children on the final trial day. “One day Rihanna brought the babies to court, and people were thinking it was a ploy,” he said around the 2:15 mark in the interview. “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 actually brought their children in case Rocky received a guilty verdict.
“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 added. “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 up to 24 years in prison if convicted. He was ultimately found not guilty of two felony counts earlier this month. The rapper was accused of shooting his former friend and collaborator Terell Ephron (ASAP Relli) outside a Hollywood hotel in 2021. Rocky and his defense team turned down a plea deal that would’ve given him 180 days in jail, a seven-year suspended sentence, and three years probation.
Tacopina said rejecting the plea deal was a no-brainer and they barely spent time discussing it.
“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 revealed around the 6:00 mark. “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 down below.
