FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ The Broward County state attorney's office will not prosecute Pro Football Hall of Fame member Michael Irvin for sexual battery, the office said Monday.
"The case has been declined for lack of evidence and no likelihood of conviction," a state attorney's office spokesman said.
The former Dallas Cowboy has described his accuser as a platonic friend of 10 years.
The rape case against Irvin began after a woman told Fort Lauderdale police of an alleged sexual battery at the W Hotel on the city's beachfront that was reported March 22.
A week later, police said that Irvin was someone being investigated in the case, though he had not been charged with any offense and had not been arrested.
Irvin has defended himself in newspaper, television and YouTube interviews.
"I have never, ever, in that decade, we've never had any kind of dating relationship and we've never had any kind of sexual relationship or sexual relations in any way," Irvin, 51, told Fox 4 TV in Dallas in an April interview, one held during the five months he was being investigated.
"She's like a little niece," Irvin said. "She's been around me, she's been around my family, been out to eat with us. I considered her a friend."
Documents that may have named Irvin _ who is from Fort Lauderdale and went to St. Thomas Aquinas High School and played for the University of Miami _ or which described the alleged incident were heavily redacted.
In a longer version of the television interview that was shown on YouTube, Irvin said that on March 21, he and some friends were at the Ocean Manor Beach Resort and, after midnight, moved their party to the Rock Bar. Both venues are on the beach.
Irvin said he offered his room at the W Hotel to friends to sleep because he was going to the airport for an early morning flight. Irvin said a male friend was with him and the woman in his hotel room, and that the male friend left.
He said during the Fox 4 interview that he was alone in the room with the alleged victim for "a short while, we were not there that long."
He showered, packed and left for his flight, and the woman accompanied him to the hotel lobby, Irvin said then. "There was nobody left in my hotel room drugged, passed out and taken advantage of," he said.
Attorney Gloria Allred was representing Irvin's accuser. In an email Monday, Allred declined to comment.
Irvin has successfully fought legal troubles in the past:
_In 1997, a prosecutor declined to file charges against Irvin relating to an alleged assault against a man at a San Francisco nightclub.
_In 1996, police found cocaine in an Irving, Texas, motel room. Irvin pleaded no contest to a felony cocaine possession charge. He was fined, ordered to perform community service and in 2000, successfully completed his probation sentence, according to news reports.
_In 2001, a Texas judge dismissed a "felony charge of possessing less than a gram of cocaine," The Associated Press reported, because a police search of a Dallas apartment was done without a warrant.
_In Broward County in 2010, the state attorney's office declined to charge him in an alleged sexual battery at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood. The prosecutor said he did not have physical evidence from the 2007 alleged incident to support the charges and cited inconsistencies in the accuser's story that weakened the case, according to news reports.
Irvin was a football star at St. Thomas and as a wide receiver for the Hurricanes, he was part of the team that won the 1987 National Championship. With the Cowboys, he starred on teams that won three Super Bowls.
