A$AP Rocky's Trial Begins: Legal and Public Opinion Perspectives (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Well, the jury in the Hollywood shooting trial of rapper A$AP Rocky has just been sworn in and the trial now moves to opening statements. The Grammy-nominated rapper, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, faces two felony charges for firing a semi-automatic gun at a former friend. The confrontation allegedly happened back in 2021, and earlier this week, A$AP Rocky turned down a plea deal. He faces up to 24 years in prison if he's convicted. So to discuss this, let's bring in ABC News Legal Contributor and Trial Attorney Brian Buckmeyer and ABC News Contributor and Sirius XM Radio host Mike News. So Brian, first to you on the legal front, A$AP Rocky turned down this plea deal, included three years probation, six-month jail term. I mean, now he's really rolling the dice. What do you think?

Speaker 2: Yeah, it is really a roll of the dice, especially when you look at, as you said, the potential of facing 24 years in prison, and he could have done six months. And as I said on other platforms here many times, I think it's even more serious when you know that A$AP Rocky has a three-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old. When I have clients, I always try to tell them, hey, six months, you may miss six months of that three-year-old's life, but if you lose and you go down for 10, 15, 20 years, that's a lot to lose. But he clearly thinks that he can win this case, and as the attorney just said, he knows that he's innocent.

Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a, they put it in such human terms. So Mike, the judge is allowing cameras inside the courtroom. A$AP Rocky is connected romantically to one of the biggest stars in the world, Rihanna. Do you think the court of public opinion is going to help or hurt his case?

Speaker 3: I think it's more so about the court of public opinion actually going inside the jury room in terms of the jurors. I've been talking really specifically about the concern of lack of representation, particularly upon black jurors being a part of this jury. As in order to be judged and have a fair trial, you must be judged by a jury of your peers. Why that is important is you have to have individuals who have cultural competencies, an understanding of the hip-hop dialect, the hip-hop archaeological, anthropological discourse that exists, and so that the jury doesn't become biased by certain words and terminology that they hear. A lot of jurors could be antagonistic to the hip-hop genre as a whole. Take for instance, when you hear words and terminology like gang gang, is that actually being a gang, or do people in the hip-hop community, such as myself, we refer to that as friends. A$AP Rocky is a part of a collective called the A$AP Collective. Oftentimes we hear them say A$AP Mob. So how will the jurors receive any biases of the word mob, where mob for us in this context does mean a group or a gathering of individuals. A$AP Rocky has a song called Fashion Killer. That doesn't mean he's a killer. This means that he knows how to dress really well, which is why he is one of the co-chairs of the Met Gala, which the subtext of the Met Gala is really focused on the black male dandy in terms of high fashion. And so if you don't have a cultural competency, an understanding of the translation of this, will this bias jurors in order to have a biased outcome, which is why I've been raising the alarm about the importance of the selection of this jury. That is going to be something I am watching in the courtroom, as well as all of us are watching outside the courtroom. How would that play?

Speaker 1: Yeah, that is really interesting. Both, both you guys, I learned a lot and we'll have you more, we'll have more from you later. Brian Buckmeyer, Mike Meades, thank you very much.