Kevin Spacey Trial: Jury Retires to Deliberate on Verdict

Kevin Spacey’s criminal trial in the U.K. is now in the hands of its jury.

Almost five weeks after the two-time Oscar winner’s trial over multiple charges of sexual assault first started at London’s Southwark Crown Court, Justice Mark Wall on Monday summed up the evidence that had been presented before asking the 12-strong jury to retire to deliberate.

Spacey is accused of assaulting four men between 2001 and 2013, all of which took place while he was living in London and many relating to the period when he was the artistic director of the Old Vic theater, a position he held between 2004 and 2015. 

Originally there were 12 charges, including seven counts of sexual assault, three counts of indecent 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. An additional count of indecent assault was added mid-trial, but all four indecent assault charges were later dropped due to a “legal technicality.” However, the most serious, involving penetrative sexual activity without consent, remains and carries with it a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Spacey has 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. The fourth encounter he denied entirely.

Over the course of the last month, the jury has heard how Spacey was a “sexual bully” who took pleasure in making his victims of violence feel “powerless and uncomfortable.”

Spacey’s defense, led by his lawyer Patrick Gibbs KC, has focused on questioning the truthfulness of the accusers. In his closing remarks last week, he said there were “three liars in this case,” adding that the “problem” with the fourth complainant’s evidence is that he “wasn’t exactly sober as he describes it — but nobody was.”