Kevin Spacey Trial Lawyers Clash Over Jury Instructions After Defense Rests; Closing Arguments Set For Thursday – Update
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
UPDATED, 1:42 PM: 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.
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.
More from Deadline
Related Story
Danny Masterson Rape Trial Tries To Move Beyond Scientology; Jane Doe #1 Testifies About Second Alleged Assault In 2003
Related Story
Kevin Spacey Trial: Sides Clash Over Anthony Rapp's PTSD Diagnosis – Update
Related Story
Scientology Showdown Dominates Danny Masterson Rape Trial; Alleged Assault "Felt Almost Incestuous", Tearful Witness Tells Court – Update
“A jury could find that was unreasonable,” he said, declining to modify jury instructions on whether any of Rapp’s own conduct would lessen Spacey’s liability.
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.”
PREVIOUSLY, 11:32 AM: Kevin Spacey’s lawyers on Wednesday wrapped up their case in Star Trek: Discovery actor Anthony Rapp’s $40 million sexual misconduct suit against the embattled former star, with a psychiatrist hired by Spacey’s team as the last witness before jurors hear closing arguments scheduled for Thursday.
A lawyer for Rapp, Richard Steigman, spent the morning grilling the defense’s mental health expert, forensic psychiatrist Alexander Bardey, who testified that Spacey’s accuser isn’t afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder and instead shows traits of narcissism.
Steigman challenged Bardey for saying that Rapp self-reported “off the charts” levels of trauma, anxiety and depression to the psychologist hired by Rapp’s legal team while showing moderate levels of mental distress, or none at all, on other tests that rely less on the test-taker’s own word.
Steigman produced one test Rapp took, a so-called “anxiety inventory,” with a maximum score of 63 indicating the highest levels of anxiety. Rapp’s score was 19. “Nineteen out of 63 — off the charts, right, doc?” Steigman said. Bardey said “off the charts” was his “clinical judgment” and an “assessment of the totality” of his own screening of Rapp.
Rapp’s mental state, and whether Spacey affected it, is a central question of this federal case in Manhattan, brought under a New York State law that allows decades-old allegations of sexual abuse to be tried after the normal statute of limitations. Rapp testified that in 1986, when he was 14, a 26-year-old Spacey physically picked him “like a groom picks up a bride,” placed him on a bed in Spacey’s apartment, and then climbed on top of him in an attempt to initiate sex.
Rapp testified that he wriggled free but it was still “the most traumatic single invent” in his life. The Rapp team’s psychologist, Lisa Rocchio, testified that Rapp has struggled with relationships, sexuality, anger, depression and ever since, and in 2017 developed delayed onset, full-blown PTSD.
Rapp’s lawyers sought to show that Rapp gave consistent answers across a battery of tests, some entirely self-reported and some designed to identify people who fake or exaggerate mental illness. Spacey’s lawyers have suggested that if Rapp isn’t faking symptoms to bolster his claim for millions of dollars in damages, he’s blaming Spacey for other, arguably more traumatic events in his life including another sexual encounter at age 14 that he wrote about unfavorably in his memoir.
Bardey said that Rapp telling friends over the years that Spacey abused him, but not his therapist until after he went public with his claim, was proof of a narcissistic tendency to turn the spotlight on himself. Steigman, in his last words on the matter, asked, “Are there narcissists who become A-list actors and win Tonys and other awards?,” an apparent reference to Tony and Oscar winner Spacey.
With that, Judge Lewis Kaplan sent jurors home until Thursday. He then entertained, and denied, a motion by defense lawyer Jay Barron — who already got the judge to throw out a claim of emotional distress — to throw out Rapp’s last remaining claim of physical battery. Kaplan also declined a motion to remove the punitive damages claim. But he indicated that he might revisit the questions while keeping the battery claim intact “at least for now,” and working with the lawyers to decide what, exactly, jurors will be asked to decide.
Rapp’s allegations were 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.
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.
Sean Piccoli contributed to this report.
Best of Deadline
Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
