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Amid the viral hotel footage of Diddy allegedly assaulting his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura, back in 2016, questions have arose as to whether the rapper can now be charged for the assault that occured then. According to authorities, the 54-year-old rapper will not face any assault charges in relation to the 2016 incident at the now-closed InterContinental Hotel in Century City.
The primary reason behind this is that the assault was reportedly not officially documented. Cops have told TMZ that they have no official record that they could go back to, in order to investigate the assault, after eight years.
There is also a Statute of Limitations for Assault in California, which restricts the time within which a complainant has to report the assault to the law enforcement. In California, the complainant has a period of one year to report a simple assault to the police for charges to be pressed.
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In case of a felony assault, the period is extended to three years for cases that happened before 2020. If not done within the period, the defendant might get dismissed of the charges.
Diddy might escape getting charged since there is reportedly no official record of the assault with law enforcement officials
54-year-old Sean "Diddy" Combs was accused of assaulting his now former girlfriend Cassie Ventura back in 2016. The lawsuit was filed against the rapper last year in November. However, it was settled shortly after getting officially filed.
Recently, CNN obtained a hotel footage which reportedly captured the 2016 assault of Ventura.
Amid all this chaos, one might wonder if the rapper can actually be charged for the assault after eight years since the day it allegedly happened. The answer would be that the rapper might just escape.
TMZ reported that no official documentation and record of the 2016 assault is present with the police. According to cops, nobody reported the incident back then.
Another statute that came into the scene was the statute of limitations of assault in California. According to this statute, there is a time frame within which one has to report the assault for the charges to be filed against the defendant.
In case of a simple assault, authorities would treat it as a misdemeanor, whereas in other cases it'd be a felony. According to Shouse California Law Group:
"If a person commits an assault, and the crime is charged as a misdemeanor (for example, simple assault), then the statute of limitations is one year."
It further mentioned:
"If an offender commits an assault, and the offense is charged as a felony, the crime usually carries a three-year statute of limitations period."
Los Angeles Police Department told TMZ that the three-year limitation would be for cases that happened before January 2020. However, for incidents that took place after January 2020, the limitation had been extended to five years.
According to LAPD, it is unlikely that anybody would dive into the case where the assault happened in 2016.
NBC News reported that LAPD could actually start an investigation, if Cassie reported the incident against Diddy, now. However, it was unlikely that charges would be pressed by the District Attorney, the primary reason being the prolonged period that had passed after the 2016 incident allegedly occured.
The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office further confirmed that charges couldn't be filed against Diddy, since the incident happened eight years ago, and that has crossed the limitation.
The district attorney's office had, however, described the video capturing Cassie Ventura's alleged assault as "extremely disturbing” and “difficult to watch." The DA's office reasoned it out by stating:
"The conduct would have occurred beyond the timeline where a crime of assault can be prosecuted."
Diddy has denied all allegations made against him by ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura
While the hotel footage capturing Diddy allegedly assaulting his then-girlfriend Cassie, has gone viral, it is unclear as to how CNN obtained the video. On May 17, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton spoke in an Instagram live session that the government reportedly found the video from Diddy's house in a raid.
The video possibly got leaked after that which led to the news outlet lay its hands on the footage.
Despite the viral video, it now seems that the rapper might not even before charged, because so much time had passed since the incident that allegedly happened in 2016.
The lawsuit with all the abuse allegations by Ventura was filed in November 2023, however, it was settled a day later.
The rapper has, however, denied all the allegations made against him by Cassie. However, later many other women made similar accusations against him, which he denied as well.
While CNN didn't confirm the source of how it acquired the video, they mentioned that they had compared the venue shown in the footage to the images of the LA hotel available online.
