BERLIN — A$AP Rocky and two associates were found guilty of assault by a Swedish court on Wednesday but will face no prison time, capping a case that drew international attention — including from President Trump, who provoked a low-level diplomatic spat with Sweden after calling for the rapper’s release.
The verdict is likely to quiet the outrage in the United States prompted by Rocky’s arrest and detention following a street brawl in Stockholm in late June in which the rapper was accused of stomping on a man after throwing him to the ground.
Rocky had maintained that he was acting in self-defense, but the Swedish judge presiding over his case said the evidence did not support that claim. The judge did, however, conclude that the charges against Rocky were not as serious as presented by prosecutors and — given mitigating circumstances — did not merit a prison sentence.
“Hopefully we won’t have to go back to jail or nothing like that, that would be crazy,” he said, according to Reuters.
Rocky, 30, testified during the trial that he had begged the accuser to back off during what he described as a random street encounter and asserted that he had only acted in self-defense.
The court said video evidence and witness testimony did not support the rapper’s version of events.
“Based on statements from two witnesses, the court finds that the defendants were not subject to a current or imminent criminal attack. Therefore, they were not in a situation where they were entitled to use violence in self-defense,” the court said in a statement accompanying Wednesday’s verdict.
But the presiding judge added that “the prosecutor has not been able to prove that the victim was struck in the back of the head with a bottle or that he was in any other way assaulted with bottles. This has affected the assessment of the seriousness of the crime.”
Photo from NBC News