ASAP Rocky may take the risk of giving evidence at his assault trial

ASAP Rocky and his lawyers revealed that they may have the hip-hop star take the stand in his own defence at his trial over two counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm.

In discussion with a Los Angeles judge on the last phases of Rocky’s trial late Monday, his lawyer Joe Tacopina said that either his client would give evidence early on Tuesday or the defence would rest its case.

A lawyer for the prosecution said his team was going to spend the night preparing for Rocky’s testimony.

Mr Tacopina said before the trial that Rocky was “eager to tell his story. He would love the opportunity to do so”.

The lawyers could not give comment outside court on Monday because a judge has forbidden them from speaking to the media.

Rocky faces up to 24 years in prison if convicted.

The Grammy-nominated hip-hop star, fashion mogul and actor is the long-time partner of singing superstar Rihanna, with whom he has two toddler sons.

She was not in the courtroom on Monday, but has appeared sporadically — most recently on Friday, when they left the courthouse together for the first time, walking arm-in-arm.

She may appear on Tuesday to watch him take the stand.

Rocky, whose legal name is Rakim Mayers, would likely give evidence that a gun he fired twice — in a scuffle with a former friend on a Hollywood street corner in 2021 — was a starter pistol that only fired blanks, and that he carried it for security.

Lou Levin said he told the rapper it made sense to carry it after Rocky’s house had been broken into by a stalker and others.

“Security and I thought it would be a good idea, because of the prior violence,” Levin said. “It’s just a nonlethal form of self-defence.”

Levin said he got the gun from a video shoot in the summer of 2021, about three months before the incident that led to the charges.

“I was on set and I handled it there, saw him take it,” Levin said.

He told the jury that he returned the phony gun to the music video’s co-director, who no longer had it when Levin asked about it after Rocky’s arrest.

The defence said it does not have the starter pistol now. Authorities also did not recover the pistol they allege Rocky used.

Levin said that an ammunition magazine found in Rocky’s house by officers serving a search warrant actually belonged to him.

Levin said he bought the wrong type of magazine by mistake and left it at Rocky’s house.

Deputy district attorney John Lewin said “you had to come up with a story” to explain why he bought a magazine for a type of gun he did not own, and left it at Rocky’s house.

He later angrily called every aspect of the story “a lie”.

“I didn’t have to come up with a story — it’s the truth,” Levin said.

Levin also told the court that he saw the prop gun in Rocky’s possession earlier on the day of the incident, though he was not there at the confrontation.

Levin, who also goes by ASAP Lou, said he had worked as Rocky’s personal assistant since 2010, and became his tour manager around 2017.

Mr Lewin asked him whether he had an interest in whether his close friend and sometime employer is convicted or not.

The answer was stricken from the record because the jury was not supposed to hear the potential sentence length.

Rocky is accused of firing two shots at ASAP Relli, a fellow member of the ASAP Mob, a crew of musicians and other creators they formed in high school in New York.

Relli, whose legal name is Terell Ephron, said his knuckles were grazed in the shooting, but he was not otherwise injured.

Police who searched the scene after a report of a shooting found no physical evidence.

But Relli returned to the scene and said he recovered two 9mm shell casings.

He took those to police when he went to report the incident two days later.