|
 Prosecutors said they made the decision to drop the felony
indecent assault and battery charge against the Oscar winner
after the alleged victim invoked his right under the U.S.
Constitution against giving self-incriminating testimony.
Spacey's lawyers had previously accused the man of deleting text
messages that would support his defense. The man invoked his
Fifth Amendment rights during a hearing earlier this month
concerning the whereabouts of his cell phone, which was missing.
A lawyer for Spacey, 59, did not respond to requests for
comment.
Spacey, who has won two Oscars, including the best actor Academy
Award in 2000 for his role in "American Beauty," had pleaded not
guilty to the charge. His lawyers had called the allegations
"patently false."
Mitchell Garabedian, the accuser's lawyer, said in a statement
that his client had "shown an enormous amount of courage under
difficult circumstances."
The case's filing last year marked one of the relatively rare
criminal prosecutions of the #MeToo era, which has seen mostly
women reveal widespread patterns of sexual harassment and abuse
in entertainment, business and politics.
The allegations emerged after another actor accused Spacey of
trying to seduce him three decades ago when he was 14, leading
Netflix to drop Spacey from "House of Cards," and to his scenes
being edited out of the film "All the Money in the World."
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Spacey first became embroiled in controversy in October 2017 when
actor Anthony Rapp accused him of trying to seduce him in 1986, when
Rapp was 14. Spacey apologized for his inappropriate conduct with
Rapp.
The Nantucket accuser told police Spacey had bought him several
rounds of beer and whiskey at the Club Car Restaurant on the island
in July 2016 when he was 18 and, according to charging documents,
said at one point, "Let's get drunk."
As they stood next to a piano, Spacey groped the man, he told
investigators.
Spacey's accuser sued on June 26, but dropped the lawsuit a week
later ahead of a July 8 hearing in Nantucket District Court
regarding his phone, which his lawyer said he could not find after
being ordered to turn it over to Spacey's attorneys.
He then invoked his Fifth Amendment rights after taking questions
from an attorney for Spacey about whether text messages were deleted
from the phone before it was given to investigators.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Scott Malone, Dan
Grebler and G Crosse)
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