Los Angeles D.A. Drops Rape Charges Against Sylvester Stallone

Rambo, Rocky/Creed and The Expendables star Sylvester Stallone will not be facing rape charges. The Los Angeles County District Attorney has issued a statement explaining that there’s “insufficient evidence to support a filing in addition to the allegations being made outside the statute of limitation.” This was in response to a case presented by the Santa Monica Police Department based on the claims of a woman who filed a report over an alleged 1990s sexual assault.

Naturally, this will come as a relief to Stallone and his team. When the original allegation was made, his lawyer Marty Singer spoke to USA Today to state that they “categorically disputed the claim.” Still, they did acknowledge that he’d been in a relationship with the woman for less than a week while shooting Rambo III in Israel in 1987.

Singer went on to say the following:

“We have two witnesses who have come forward to deny her statements. One woman came forward and said that she was asked to lie for this woman to say it occurred. We have nothing to hide here.”

The D.A.’s charge evaluation worksheet seems to corroborate this, explaining that:

“Victim and suspect had a consensual relationship in 1987.  The victim alleged assaults in 1987 and 1990 and provided fresh complaint witnesses. However, none of the witnesses corroborated victim’s allegations. Additional investigation did not provide any further corroboration.”

Of course, Sylvester Stallone is just the latest high profile celebrity that the D.A.’s declined to charge with sexual assault, joining Kevin Spacey, Steven Seagal and Anthony Anderson. Working in these actors’ favor was that the statute of limitations had expired in many of the accusations, which dated back to the mid-1990s.

Notable by his absence from all this is Harvey Weinstein. That’s likely because multiple accusations from many women are still being pursued by prosecutors up and down the country, so it might be a while before we hear of any concerted effort to file criminal charges against the former producer.