After more than 12 hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted the Oscar-winning US actor Kevin Spacey of nine charges which he was accused of committing between 2004 and 2013 at a time when he was working at London’s Old Vic theatre.
Spacey, who was also celebrating his 64th birthday on Wednesday, began to cry and mouthed “thank you” to the nine men and three-woman jurors, before wiping away tears with a tissue.
After he was released from the dock, he shook hands with his lawyers before leaving the courtroom via a side door.
The Hollywood star spoke with five of the jurors in the lobby of Southwark Crown Court, before emerging from the building to address a phalanx of journalists and photographers.
“I imagine that many of you can understand that there’s a lot for me to process after what has just happened today,” he said. “I am humbled by the outcome today.”
He also said he was “enormously grateful to the jury for having taken the time to examine all of the evidence and all of the facts carefully before they reached their decision”.
During the four-week trial, prosecutors described the actor as a “sexual bully” who had aggressively groped three of the men and performed oral sex on the fourth while he had passed out in the Hollywood star’s London apartment.
When he gave evidence, the film star, who was tried under his full name Kevin Spacey Fowler, said the case against him was weak, and that the incidents, if they had occurred at all, were consensual. He said he was promiscuous, a “big flirt” who had “casual, indiscriminate sexual encounters”.
While he might have made a clumsy pass at one of the men, he said he had never assaulted anyone and suggested that the accusers had come forward to make money.
Spacey told the court three of the four complainants had brought civil lawsuits against him, saying one had contacted him seeking a payment of more than 450,000 pounds.
He also said he had tasked private investigators to look into at least three of the men.
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