The Prosecutors in the US state of Massachusetts have dropped a criminal case against Kevin Spacey, who was accused of groping an 18-year-old man at a bar on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 2016.
The charges of indecent assault and battery were dropped on Wednesday, after the accuser in the case refused to testify about a missing phone. The defence had argued that the phone could prove the actor’s innocence.
The court had ordered the accuser to take to the stand earlier this month after he said he lost the phone he had used on the night of the alleged assault. Spacey’s lawyers had accused him of deleting text messages.
However, the accused invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refused to testify.
Spacey has faced several sexual misconduct accusations, but this was the only one that had resulted in a criminal case.
According to the accuser in this case, Spacey got him drunk and then unzipped his pants and groped him for several minutes at the crowded restaurant in Nantucket, Massachusetts.
The allegations came after another actor accused Spacey of climbing on top of him on a bed when he was just 14. Spacey was 26 years old then.
Amid multiple allegations of misconduct, Spacey was later dropped from the Netflix series House of Cards. His scenes from the film All the Money in the World were also edited out.
Spacey’s case was one of few criminal cases to have resulted from Hollywood’s #MeToo campaign.
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