Kevin Spacey Found Not Liable In Anthony Rapp’s $40M Sexual Misconduct Lawsuit

UPDATED with more details: The jury in Anthony Rapp’s $40 million sexual misconduct lawsuit against Kevin Spacey has found the two-time Oscar winner not liable for damages today. They had deliberated for only an hour-plus, after eight days of testimony.

As the verdict was read, a facemasked Spacey lowered his head and then appeared to wipe away tears. Moments later, he stood, turned and exchanged hugs with his lawyers and then his manager, Evan Lowenstein. Rapp, seated with his attorneys, stared straight ahead. 

Addressing a crowd outside the Manhattan courtroom, Rapp lawyer Richard Steigman said : “The jury spoke. Anthony told his truth. We respect the jury’s verdict, but it doesn’t change his truth.”

Later, Spacey attorney Jennifer Keller told the crowd, “This was a highly intelligent, highly educated jury — I think 11 of the 12 were college grads. Most had graduate degrees. They’re very, very bright people, and they could see right through this.” She added, “Mr. Spaceey is deeply grateful for the jury system and for this jury in particular.”

For his part, Spacey simply walked past the throng and crawled into a waiting SUV without offering any comment.

Jurors had spent a combined three hours today listening to the sides’ attorneys give their closing arguments. The prosecution summarized its case first, with Steigman telling jurors that his client told the truth, consistently over time, about being sexually assaulted by the Oscar-winning actor in 1986 even when that truth was “messy” and didn’t always help his case.

He said Spacey’s only defense at trial was to accuse Rapp of carrying on “a 35-year crusade” against a fellow actor based on a lie that has had conveniently shifting motives over the years — from romantic jealousy to professional envy to gay rage to self-promotion — none of which Spacey’s lawyers ever proved.

Saying Rapp “cooked up that lie out of thin air” was, in Steigman’s words, “a defense to a lawsuit: nothing more and nothing less. Because if you’re going to call a guy a liar, then you’ve got to give him a motive.”

In her closing argument, Keller hammered away at the contradicting recollections of Rapp and Spacey, saying the gist of the Star Trek: Discovery actor’s allegations are due to his 35-year “vendetta” against the defendant. “There is no evidence that this [sexual misconduct] took place,” Keller said, “and plenty of evidence that it didn’t.”

Keller began her closing statement by showing jurors a photo of the studio apartment that Spacey occupied in 1986. She emphasized, as Spacey’s lawyers had throughout the trial, that there was no separate bedroom. Rapp has said that before Spacey came on to him, he was watching television away from the party and that at one point he looked through a crack in the bedroom door and noticed that all the party guests had left.

“His story depends on the existence of a bedroom,” Keller said. “That’s the stubborn fact the plaintiff cannot get away from.” She added that Rapp’s story only makes sense “if you’re a 14-year-old boy and you’re not going to be asked about the details.”

She went so far as to called the Manhattan apartment’s floor plan “the star witness” in the case.

Thursday’s closing arguments opened with the jury one person down, to 11 members: A juror who aggravated an old back injury and was stuck at home was excused from the case.

Rapp said in a 2017 BuzzFeed article — and on the witness stand this week — that in 1986, when he was 14, a 26-year-old Spacey physically picked him up “like a groom picks up a bride,” placed him on a bed, and then climbed on top of him in an attempt to initiate sex. 

Rapp, who had just finished performing on Broadway in the play Precious Sons, testified that he wriggled free but that it still was “the most traumatic single event” in his life. The Rapp team’s psychologist, Lisa Rocchio, testified that Rapp has struggled with relationships, sexuality, anger, and depression ever since, and in 2017 developed delayed onset, full-blown PTSD. 

The defense attacked that claim, noting Rapp’s success as an actor and his stable, monogamous married life — which are inconsistent with PTSD, which he said interferes with normal everyday functioning. “He has done very well for himself,” Barney said, adding, “He has what I would consider a perfectly normal life.”

In his testimony Tuesday, Alexander Bardey — the psychiatrist hired by Spacey’s team — said that Rapp’s self-reported trauma symptoms were “off the charts” in one set of tests given by Rocchio but nonexistent or moderate in other tests she gave to weed out people who fake mental illness. He added that Rapp’s success as an actor and his stable, monogamous married life are inconsistent with PTSD, which the actor said interferes with normal everyday functioning. 

“He has done very well for himself,” Bardey testified, adding, “He has what I would consider a perfectly normal life.”

Rapp’s sexual misconduct allegations are among several that made Spacey an early focus of the #MeToo movement in 2017. The American Beauty and The Usual Suspects Oscar winner and multiple Emmy nominee for House of Cards also faces trial in the UK for an alleged sexual assault, with that case set for June, and he is on the hook for $31 million awarded to House of Cards producers Media Rights Capital because the claims hastened the end of the show and were deemed a breach of his acting and producing agreements.

Sean Piccoli contributed to this report.