Copyright The Associated Press. All rights reserved. If he was innocent he would be home a long time ago. Rihanna, the superstar singer and Rocky's partner, watched from the audience for the second straight day.
After the jury left for the day, Superior Court Mark Arnold said that he hadn't heard the latter part of the statement, and would tell them to disregard it when they returned for the rest of the cross-examination Friday. The judge admonished him. Rocky, whose legal name is Rakim Athelaston Mayers, sat at the defense table in a black suit and did not audibly respond.
He is charged with two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic handgun for allegedly firing at Relli, his friend since high school. The charges, with a conviction, could lead to up to 25 years in prison. Rihanna, who has two toddler sons with Rocky, caused a stir with her first appearance at his trial Wednesday. She returned to the same spot in Rocky's section on Thursday, sitting between his mother and sister.
Surreptitiously, she entered the courtroom before most of the audience. She wore a white top and gold earrings, and calmly followed the proceedings. Tacopina's questioning broached the initial confrontation between Rocky and Relli, but when the trial ended for the day, had still not reached the actual moment when the shots were allegedly fired. He spent much of it examining Relli's attitude toward Rocky leading up to the shooting. He denied that he had been upset with the Rocky before the alleged shooting, as the defense confronted him with text messages and previous testimony that suggested otherwise.
In another text message from a few weeks before the confrontation, Relli said he was going to beat Rocky up if he didn't pay for a deceased mutual friend's body to be returned to New York as promised. Relli said he learned later that Rocky had in fact paid. And Tacopina showed texts from just before the Nov. He said he didn't know why he had deleted that text exchange from his phone before handing it over to police. He testified under prosecution questioning earlier that Rocky had pulled a gun on him and fired it, grazing his hand.
