Kevin Spacey has been found not guilty in his U.K. criminal trial.
The head of jury read out the verdict, as reached by the 12 members of the public — nine men and three women — to judge Mark Wall.
Spacey, 63, pleaded not guilty to nine charges escalating from unwanted touching to aggressive fondling to, in one instance, performing oral sex on an unconscious man. All the charges date between 2001 and 2013, most relating to the period when he was the artistic director of London’s Old Vic theater, a position he held from 2004 to 2015.
When the trial began on June, there were 12 charges against Spacey. An additional count of indecent assault was added mid-trial, but then all four indecent assault charges were dropped due to a “legal technicality.”
The actor denied all the charges, describing two of the sexual encounters as consensual and a third as a “clumsy pass,” for which he claimed he had later attempted to apologize, and something his lawyer Patrick Gibbs said the jury should not convict him over. The fourth encounter he denied entirely. He claimed the accusers were driven by money.
The prosecutor Christine Agnew described Spacey as a “sexual bully” who used his celebrity status to get what he wanted, and someone who “it would seem delights in making others feel powerless and uncomfortable.”
Speaking to the German ZEITmagazin before the trial, Spacey said he anticipated working again almost immediately were he to be found not guilty. “I know that there are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges in London,” Spacey said. “The second that happens, they’re ready to move forward.”
More to come.
