Kevin Spacey will not be charged in his sexual assault case in Los Angeles after his alleged victim passed away.
The 60-year-old actor was facing a court case after being accused of forcing a male massage therapist to touch his genitals during an in-home session back in 2016 as reported by The Sauce, but on Tuesday (29.10.19) the case against Spacey – who denied all charges against him – was dropped.
According to TMZ, the LA County District Attorney’s Office rejected the case after the alleged victim died during the investigation.
Without the victim, the District Attorney said the case could not be proven, and so has been dropped, without Spacey facing charges.
Law enforcement sources have reportedly told TMZ that the man died a few weeks ago, and that his cause of death was “natural causes”.
The decision to drop the case comes after the former ‘House of Cards’ star had a separate criminal sexual assault case against him in Massachusetts dropped after the alleged victim invoked the Fifth Amendment.
Kevin originally pled not guilty to criminal charges of indecent assault and battery in connection with an allegation he groped a young man in a bar in July 2016 as reported by The Sauce, but in July of this year, the charges were dropped by the Cape & Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe.
In court documents, O’Keefe said he was dropping the case due to the “unavailability of the complaining witness.”
He then said in a press release: “The complaining witness was informed that if he chose to continue to invoke his Fifth Amendment right, the case would not be able to go forward.”
The dropping of the case came just over a week after Spacey’s accuser invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during a pre-trial hearing.
The meeting in Massachusetts focused on a phone used by the alleged victim, who texted his girlfriend and sent a video during the alleged assault, with the prosecution explaining they had obtained data, which they shared with the defense, before returning the device to the man’s family, only for it to go missing.
Spacey’s team was keen to examine the phone in case evidence was deleted before it was handed over, with one lawyer telling the judge they believed the accuser and his mother had “sanitized the phone”.
The alleged victim testified that he hadn’t deleted anything but then, after consulting with his lawyer, opted to exercise his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Spacey – who has been accused of misconduct by several men – was fired from Netflix drama ‘House of Cards’ over previous sexual assault allegations made against him and was replaced in the drama ‘All The Money In The World’.
In November 2017, he entered a treatment facility and has remained out of the public eye since.
