A$AP Rocky dives into Rihanna’s arms as not guilty verdict is read at felony assault trial

 LOS ANGELES (AP) — A$AP Rocky dove into the arms of Rihanna Tuesday as a clerk read the not guilty verdict at his trial on two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm.

The Los Angeles courtroom, full of fans of the hip-hop performer and his singing superstar partner, exploded into screaming glee as Rocky leapt from the defense table into the gallery, where Rihanna sat between his mother and sister. They embraced and sobbed.

After a three-week trial, the jury deliberated for just three hours to reach the verdict that spared Rocky, whose legal name is Rakim Mayers, a prison sentence that could have run more than two decades.

“Thank y’all for saving my life,” he told the jurors as they left.

Amid the chaos, it took the clerk a while to read the second not guilty verdict, though it was very unlikely the jury would split on the counts“Mr. Mayers, you’re excused,” Judge Mark Arnold said.

On the eve of trial, Rocky turned down a prosecution offer of just six months in jail, along with probation and other conditions, if he would plead guilty to one count.

Insisting on his innocence, Rocky decided to gamble that a jury would feel the same. It paid off. The jurors felt at least that there was reasonable doubt of his guilt.Rocky’s lawyer Joe Tacopina said in his closing argument that Relli is “an angry pathological liar” who “committed perjury again and again and again and again.”

Rocky’s lawyers and witnesses they called said Rocky had shot a prop gun that only fires blanks, which he had been carrying for security since taking it from a music video set months earlier. They said he fired it as a warning because Relli was attacking another member of their crew.

The jurors were also instructed that if they found that Rocky reasonably believed that he or one of the two friends with him that night were in imminent danger of injury, and that he used reasonable force, they could find the defendant not guilty.

The jurors were escorted from the courthouse and all left promptly without speaking to reporters. It wasn’t clear whether they reached the verdict because they believed he was in fact carrying a prop gun or that he acted in self-defense. They did not have to agree on their reasoning, or explain it outside of the jury room. They just had to reach the same conclusion.