A jury sided with Kevin Spacey on Thursday in one of many lawsuits that derailed the movie star’s profession, discovering he didn’t sexually abuse Anthony Rapp, then 14, whereas each have been comparatively unknown actors in Broadway performs in 1986.
The verdict within the civil trial got here with lightning pace. Jurors at a federal courtroom in New York deliberated for a bit of greater than an hour earlier than deciding that Rapp hadn’t confirmed his allegations.
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When the decision was learn, Spacey dropped his head, then hugged his attorneys. He didn’t converse to reporters as he left the courthouse.
“We’re very grateful to the jury for seeing through these false allegations,” mentioned his legal professional, Jennifer Keller.
“What’s next is Mr. Spacey is going to be proven that he’s innocent of anything he’s been accused of. That there was no truth to any of the allegations,” she added, a reference to different sexual misconduct claims in opposition to the actor, together with prison costs in England.
During the trial, Rapp testified that Spacey had invited him to his condo for a celebration, then approached him in a bed room after the opposite visitors left. He mentioned the actor, then 26, picked him up and briefly laid on prime of him on a mattress.
Rapp testified that he wriggled away and fled as an inebriated Spacey requested if he was certain he wished to depart.
In his sometimes-tearful testimony, Spacey informed the jury it by no means occurred, and he would by no means have been drawn to somebody who was 14.
The lawsuit sought $40 million in damages.
Rapp and his attorneys additionally left the courthouse with out chatting with reporters. In his closing statements to the jury Thursday, Rapp’s lawyer, Richard Steigman, accused Spacey of mendacity on the witness stand.
“He lacks credibility,” Steigman mentioned. “Sometimes the simple truth is the best. The simple truth is that this happened.”
Rapp, 50, and Spacey, 63, every testified over a number of days on the three-week trial.
Rapp’s claims, and people of others, abruptly interrupted what had been a hovering profession for the two-time Academy Award profitable actor, who misplaced his job on the Netflix collection “House of Cards” and noticed different alternatives dry up. Rapp is an everyday on TV’s “Star Trek: Discovery” and was a part of the unique Broadway forged of “Rent.”
Spacey confronted costs in Massachusetts that he groped a person at a bar – allegations that have been later dropped by prosecutors.
Three months in the past, he pleaded not responsible in London to costs that he sexually assaulted three males between 2004 and 2015 when he was the inventive director on the Old Vic theater in London.
A choose in Los Angeles this summer time accredited an arbitrator’s resolution to order Spacey to pay $30.9 million to the makers of “House of Cards” for violating his contract by sexually harassing crew members.
The Associated Press doesn’t normally identify individuals alleging sexual assault until they arrive ahead publicly, as Rapp has carried out.
At the trial, Spacey testified that he was certain the encounter with Rapp by no means occurred, partly as a result of he was residing in a studio condo reasonably than the one bed room that Rapp cited, and he by no means had a gathering past a housewarming occasion.
“I knew I wouldn’t have any sexual interest in Anthony Rapp or any child. That I knew,” he informed jurors.
During her closing arguments to the jury, Keller steered causes Rapp imagined the encounter with Spacey or made it up.
It was doable, she mentioned, that Rapp invented it based mostly on his expertise performing in “Precious Sons,” a play by which actor Ed Harris picks up Rapp’s character and lays on prime of him, mistaking him briefly for his spouse earlier than discovering it’s his son.
She additionally steered that Rapp later grew jealous that Spacey grew to become a megastar whereas Rapp had “smaller roles in small shows” after his breakthrough efficiency in Broadway’s “Rent.”
“So here we are today and Mr. Rapp is getting more attention from this trial than he has in his entire acting life,” Keller mentioned.
During two days of testimony, Spacey expressed remorse for a 2017 assertion he issued when Rapp first went public, by which he mentioned he didn’t recall the encounter, but when it occurred “I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.”
Dabbed his eyes with a tissue, Spacey mentioned he’d been pressured by publicists and attorneys into issuing an empathetic assertion at a time when the #MeToo motion made everybody within the business nervous.
“I’ve learned a lesson, which is never apologize for something you didn’t do,” he mentioned.
He additionally cried as he mentioned he regretted revealing publicly that he was homosexual the identical day Rapp’s accusations surfaced as a result of some interpreted his announcement as an effort to vary the topic or deflect from Rapp’s revelations.
Spacey had testified that he spoke on the trial about deeply private issues, telling the jury his father was a white supremacist and neo-Nazi who berated him as homosexual as a result of he favored the theater.
Spacey additionally gave courtroom spectators a short style of his performing chops when he briefly imitated his Broadway costar on the time, Jack Lemon. He had testified earlier that his capability at impressions aided him in his performing profession.