ASAP Rocky Found Guilty in Sweden Assault Case
A$AP Rocky has been found guilty.
According to a press release the Stockholm District Court released Wednesday (Aug. 14), Rocky was found guilty of assaulting 19-year-old Mustafa Jafari, whom Rocky and his two co-defendants, Bladimir Corniel and David Rispers, fought in the streets of Stockholm, Sweden on June 30.
While Rocky and his co-defendants argued that they acted in self-defense, prosecutors claimed that they used bottles in the fight and thus used force that far exceeded the parameters of self-defense. A jury agreed.
"The defendants have claimed that they acted in self-defense," reads one part of the press release. "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. Nor could they have perceived themselves to be in such a situation."
Rocky and his co-defendants won't be given prison time, but they have been hit with conditional sentences. Rocky has been ordered to pay $12,500 Swedish krona, which amounts to $1,300 U.S. dollars—to the alleged victim for his "integrity and pain and suffering." The press release notes that Jafari received less money than he asked for. Rocky, Corniel and Rispers also have to pay the state for their legal expenses for using public defense counseling.
The judge presiding over the assault case says that the prosecution's inability to prove that Rocky and his co-defendants had hit Jafari in the back of the head with a bottle affected the perception of the crime's seriousness.
"The overall evidentiary situation in the case has been complex," Senior Judge Per Lennerbrant says. "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 affected the assessment of the seriousness of the crime."
This news arrives nearly two weeks after Rocky was released from a Swedish detention center after the assault trial ended on Aug. 2. Rocky had been behind bars since turning himself in to Swedish authorities on July 3.
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