Rozay just caught a little break in his Miami case, but he’s not out the woods yet… Prosecutors have dropped the felony battery charge against the Maybach Music boss, TMZ reports, citing newly obtained court documents.
The State Attorney’s Office decided it didn’t have enough evidence to move forward on the most serious count, which was the one that could have put Ross in real legal jeopardy.As previously reported, Prosecutors filed two misdemeanor charges against the rapper, one for battery and another for battery/domestic violence. So the felony is gone, but a pair of misdemeanors still sits on the table, and the case is very much alive.
Ross was arrested in Miami Beach on Thursday, October 1. He surrendered at the Miami Beach Police Station two days after a woman he was living with filed a report. The accuser is his ex, model and content creator Jazzma Kendrick. According to the arrest report, she went to police on September 29 to report an incident she says happened a month earlier, on August 28. She had also gone public on Instagram, sharing a photo of an injured lip she said Ross caused. At that point he was facing one felony count of battery by strangulation and one misdemeanor battery count, both classified as domestic violence.
His first court appearance had a little drama to it. Ross’s attorney Steve Sadow asked for a speedy release because of his client’s celebrity, and Judge Mindy Glazer wasn’t hearing it. She told Ross she had no idea who he was and that he’d be treated like everybody else in her courtroom. Ross pleaded not guilty and walked out on a $5,000 bond. Judges don’t care about your chain count, y’all…
His attorneys said he is being “wrongfully accused by an ex-girlfriend whose true motivations are unclear.” Dropping the felony is a clear win for that side of the fight.
Still, it’s worth saying plainly that prosecutors tossing the top count for insufficient evidence is not an acquittal or a full exoneration. The two remaining charges are still allegations, and nothing has been proven in court.
This isn’t Ross’s first run-in with the courts, either. He pleaded no contest in 2017 to aggravated assault in a Georgia case, and under that state’s first-offender program, a court later exonerated him of guilt on the felony count.
What happens next is still fuzzy. An arraignment was originally set for October 22, but reports say the proceedings were delayed with no new date announced. Ross has also reportedly waived in-person appearances at pre-trial hearings, so his lawyers will handle those for now. Expect the discovery phase, where both sides swap evidence, to shape how this plays out.