Garnering sympathy for A$AP Rocky wasn’t at the top of Rihanna’s mind when she chose to bring their sons, RZA, 2½, and Riot, 18 months, to court.
On Tuesday, Feb. 18, a jury acquitted Rocky of two charges of felony assault with a semi-automatic firearm after he was accused of firing a handgun at his former friend and A$AP Mob member A$AP Relli in a November 2021 altercation.
At one point, Rihanna brought RZA and Riot to court at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles to support the rapper as the trial came to an end.
Rocky’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, discussed the Fenty Beauty founder’s decision to bring the kids to court in a Feb. 24 interview on The Breakfast Club.
“People were thinking it was a ploy, like some sort of maneuver to get the jury to feel sympathy,” he said. “The jury’s not feeling sympathy. They know he has a wife and kids.” (Rihanna and Rocky are not legally married.)
Tacopina explained Rihanna’s choice to bring the kids “was more because it was the last day of the trial.”
“She brought them to court because that could’ve been the last time he’d seen his kids for a decade or more,” he told the radio show. “That’s why she brought them. The prosecutor made a big deal of it in his summation, which I think was a fatal mistake.”
Rihanna walked in with RZA, Riot and an older woman during the prosecution’s opening statements. The couple walked out to the hallway together during a break, each holding one of their sons.
As the break came to an end, the couple and their sons huddled up, before Rocky handed the baby he was holding back to the “Work” artist.
Rihanna then told RZA and Riot to “wish Daddy good luck.” Rocky gave her and the babies a kiss, and she then left through a back door. Following the break, the Savage X Fenty founder returned to the courtroom solo.
After the first verdict was read, Rocky quickly jumped over the stand to hug his mother and sister as well as Rihanna. “Thank y’all for saving my life,” he told the jury. “Thank y’all for making the right decision.”
In an interview with Extra on Feb. 19, Tacopina joked the famous couple promised to name their next baby after him. “They grabbed me and they said, ‘Listen, our next baby [is] A$AP Joe,'” he recalled. “I said, ‘I’m gonna hold you to that!'”
Rihanna recently spoke to Harper’s Bazaar for a cover story and said the “greatest thing” about Rocky “is seeing him be a dad. His pureness. His charm.”
“I’m annoyed because my sons sometimes just live for him more than they live for me,” she joked. “And I’m like, ‘Did you know who cooked you? Do you know who pushed you out?’ And they love him, but when I see it, oh, it’s the best.”
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