Kevin Spacey Found Not Guilty Of Sex Crimes In UK Trial
Kevin Spacey has been found not guilty in his sex crimes trial in London.
The House of Cards and American Beauty star was facing nine charges at Southwark Crown Court, including sexual assault, which were alleged to have been committed between 2001 and 2013 and relate to four men.
Spacey had tears in his eyes as a jury cleared him of the charges. After 12 hours and 26 minutes, the jury panel acquitted Spacey of seven counts of sexual assault, one count of causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.
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The double-Oscar winner denied all charges – saying the allegations against him were “madness” and a “stab in the back.”
Jurors rejected the prosecution’s claims that Spacey had “aggressively” grabbed three men by the crotch and had performed a sex act on another man while he was asleep in his flat.
Under questioning from Spacey’s lawyer, Patrick Gibbs KC, the complainants all denied either seeking financial gain, attempting to further their career or giving false accounts to the jury.
During the trial, one complainant alleged the actor “aggressively” grabbed his crotch while he drove him to a lavish showbiz party hosted by Elton John in the early 2000s.
Jurors were told Spacey allegedly grabbed another man’s crotch “like a cobra” after meeting him at a West End theater in the mid-2000s following an alleged “barrage of vile comments.”
The defendant was also accused of having had a “panicked” look on his face after a third man rejected an alleged sexual grab at an expensive property he was staying at in the Cotswolds in the early 2010s.
An aspiring actor also told the court of an alleged incident in the late 2000s where “things went further” – claiming he woke up to find Spacey performing a sex act on him.
A number of famous names were mentioned during the trial, with Rocket Man singer John even being called as a defence witness alongside husband David Furnish and Jack Lemmon’s son.
Spacey also spoke of having gifted a ping pong table to Dame Judi Dench after they worked on a film together, and told jurors about staying in Harry Potter star Richard Harris’s son’s flat in the 1980s.
Throughout the trial, the 12 jurors were urged to avoid media coverage and were instead directed to concentrate on what happened and whether it was a crime, without being too concerned with precise dates.
Spacey is becoming used to facing high-profile trials that attract mounds of media attention. Last year, he won a $40M civil case in New York after a much-covered sexual misconduct trial brought by Star Trek: Discovery star Anthony Rapp. Rapp had accused Spacey of sexually abusing him at a party when he was 14 and Spacey was 26 but a jury deliberated for a little more than an hour before deciding that Rapp hadn’t proven his allegations.
Speaking to ZEITmagazin last month, Spacey said “there are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges in London.”
Spacey has an address in Waterloo, South London, but also lives in the U.S., where he has family and a dog. His lawyer, Gibbs, had said he returned to the UK for the Southwark trial “to establish his innocence” and “proceed with his life.”
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