American actor Kevin Spacey, a New York jury on Thursday afternoon found him not liable for battery on allegations he picked up actor Anthony Rapp and briefly laid on top of him in a bed after a party in 1986.

Jurors deliberated for about an hour, and concluded Rapp did not prove that Spacey “touched a sexual or intimate part” of Rapp.

Judge Lewis Kaplan formally dismissed the case. Attorneys seated on either side of Spacey immediately put their hands on his back when the verdict was read.the 

“We are very grateful to the jury for seeing through these false allegations,” Jennifer Keller, one of Spacey’s attorneys, said later while leaving court. Spacey did not speak to reporters when he left.

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With the jurors gone, Judge Lewis Kaplan and the

lawyers in Anthony Rapp’s civil suit against Kevin Spacey trial spent their last hour in court Wednesday hashing out instructions and a verdict form for jurors, who will be hearing closing arguments beginning Thursday morning. In the back and forth over how to phrase the legal instructions that will guide the jury’s deliberations, the judge made a couple of rulings that appeared to favor Spacey’s defense team over Rapp’s, per Deadline.

Best known for his role in “Star Trek: Discovery,” Rapp had alleged that in 1986, Spacey, then 26, invited Rapp, then 14, to his Manhattan home where he picked Rapp up, laid him down on his bed, grabbed his buttocks and pressed his groin into Rapp’s body without his consent.

The judge dismissed Rapp’s claim of assault before the trial started and dismissed his claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress after Rapp’s attorneys rested his case, leaving the jury to decide only the battery claim. Under New York law, battery is touching another person, without their consent, in a way that a reasonable person would find offensive.

Kaplan said “there’s bundles of evidence” that Rapp contributed to his own mental distress by going public with his claim of sexual misconduct, “exposing himself to the lawsuit and watching Kevin Spacey movies ad nauseam,” despite the discomfort he testified that the movies caused him.

The case was also problematic legally, with two counts tossed by the court – assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress – leaving the jury to consider only the battery claim, Jackson said.he 

“The jury clearly did not accept factual assertions made by Rapp, thereby not finding him credible,” Jackson added.

But the win was a “Pyrrhic victory” for Spacey given other charges that “hang over him, including criminal charges in the UK,” CNN Legal Analyst Paul Callan said.

“Spacey has now notched two victories in sex abuse charges against him including this case and the one previously dropped in Nantucket,” Callan said. “He, however, faces an uphill battle facing other accusers and more serious criminal charges in UK.”

Spacey was charged with four counts of sexual assault against three men and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent by Britain’s Crown Prosecuting Service in May. Spacey has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

In the Nantucket case, a man alleged Spacey groped him when he was an 18-year-old busboy at a restaurant. Spacey had pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors eventually dropped the criminal case against Spacey after the accuser pleaded the Fifth on the witness stand when being questioned about his missing cellphone and about whether he deleted text messages, according to CNN.

A Spacey lawyer, Chase Scolnick, asked for language saying that Rapp violated the judge’s order against trying to introduce other people’s allegations against Spacey and that jurors could use that violation to weigh Rapp’s credibility.

“I came forward because I knew I was not the only one that Keven Spacey had made inappropriate sexual advances to,” Rapp testified — a pronouncement the judge quickly ordered struck from the record and told jurors to ignore.

The judge denied the request, telling Scolnick, “It’s your job to sum up to the jury, not mine.” But he added that he was “very troubled” by what Rapp said, having already stricken something else Rapp said earlier in the trial: “I brought this lawsuit hoping that I maybe could help protect others.”

As with all the accusations against him made over the past several years, Spacey denies anything inappropriate ever occurred.

The trial is expected to wrap up this week.

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Sources: Deadline, CNN

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