Two time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey has been found not guilty in the sex crimes he’s been accused of committing between 2001 and 2013 in relation to 4 men.
The jury (3 female, 9 male) acquitted him of seven counts of sexual assault, one count of engaging with a person in sexual activity without his consent, and one count of penetrating a person in sexual activity without consent.
Spacey lined up an impressive list of celebrity witnesses including his close friends Elton John and his husband David Furnish, the son of actor Richard Harris, and even his own niece.
The trial lasted a few days longer than a year. But Spacey’s ordeal started much earlier and his career came to an instant halt when the charges were made against him in the UK where he had headed the famous Old Vic. He was immediately replaced by Christopher Plummer on Ridley Scott’s All The Money In The World, and was famously fired from Netflix’s House of Cards, the show that headlined his name as President Francis Underwood, where he garnered many accolades and awards during his tenure in the imaginary White House. Case in point: the show eventually folded after a meagre season as soon as Spacey went MIA.
According to British law, the trial was not televised, and the complainants were not publicly identified. Yet, reports of adjectives used to describe the actor seeped through the closed doors of the courts. Spacey had tears in his eyes when he was called a “bully” and a “cobra” while the maximum sentence of life in prison was lingering above his head.
In Britain it’s an offense to publish information that may bias a jury, and Spacey didn’t want to add salt to his injury by talking to the press. He did not discuss the case and his innocence that he’s maintained throughout his ordeal, but he told the German Zeit Magazine that “I know there are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I’m cleared of these charges”.
That moment has now arrived. And we’re looking forward to welcoming him back to the family of actors, now on strike… but hopefully soon to be seen on the small screen, big screen and streamers.
Cover credit: CBS News
