Kevin Spacey’s Sexual Misconduct Trial Tentatively Set To Resume Next Week After Defense Lawyer Tests Positive For Covid – 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.
UPDATE, 1:10 PM: Kevin Spacey’s trial on sexual misconduct allegations will continue next week, maybe.
Wrapping up today’s proceedings in New York City after a session that started with the ex-House of Cards star’s lead lawyer sidelined with Covid, federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said the $40 million assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress case would pick up again on October 17.
More from Deadline
Kevin Spacey Lawyer Blitzes Anthony Rapp In Cross-Examination At $40M Civil Trial - Update
CBS Studios Updates Covid Protocols As Negotiations For Industrywide Agreement Continue
However, the caveat is that no one among the vaxxed attorneys on both sides, Spacey, Rapp, the jurors and court staff tests positive for the virus over the weekend.
Lawyer Jennifer Keller will not be allowed back in the Manhattan courtroom until Tuesday if she tests negative for Covid over the weekend. With the trial going fully masked Thursday except for those testifying, Judge Kaplan has ordered that anyone who has been in close proximity to Keller will have to take a Covid test on both Sunday and Tuesday.
Based on a 2017 claim by Rapp that Spacey attacked him in 1986, the October 6 starting trial was always set to have a dark day tomorrow due to a conflict in the judge’s schedule.
After the dramatic start to Thursday’s hearing, the day was primarily filled with testimony and cross-examination of Lisa Rocchio the expert psychologist hired by Rapp’s side. Under questioning from defense lawyer Chase Scolnick over other sexual encounters Rapp had in his youth, Rocchio said that Rap suffered scattered symptoms consistent with PTSD throughout his life — and then developed full-blown PTSD around 2017 — because he was alleged assaulted by Spacey at the age of 14-years-old over 30 years ago.
The forensic psychologist, who says Rapp suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, spent much of Thursday on the stand defending her diagnosis to Scolnick. The defense lawyer repeatedly questioned p Rocchio’s conclusion about Rapp and PTSD. Scolnick questioned whether Rocchio had ever concluded a patient was lying to her about their mental state, and pointed to what he said were inconsistencies in Rapp’s responses to the battery of tests she gave him.
Rocchio agreed with the attorney when he said that if Mr. Rapp’s allegation in the case were untrue, “then any trauma he claims to suffer would not be caused by Mr. Spacey.” But she maintained that, based on her hours of interviews and test screenings of Rapp — many of which are designed to filter out people faking mental illness — that Rapp’s PTSD was attributable primarily to the Spacey incident.
“Assuming it was true,” she added, a qualification repeated often by Rocchio and a Rapp lawyer, Richard Steigman, under a compromise in wording worked out between the parties and the judge.
Spacey himself is still expected to take the stand next week in his own defense. In that vein, and with other defense witnesses anticipated next week, the Spacey legal team will be without their most visible lawyer, Keller, in the courtroom until after she has tested negative twice and her symptoms have abated.
To that end for everyone else, the court clerk could be seen Thursday handing out the familiar blue-boxed BinaxNOW Covid rapid home test kits to Spacey supporters, including his manager, Evan Lowenstein, sitting in the first row. Spacey also raised his hand for a free test kit when the judge asked who wants one.
PREVIOUSLY, 7:49 AM: The future of Anthony Rapp’s $40 million sexual misconduct trial against Kevin Spacey suddenly became very uncertain this morning.
Mere minutes after proceedings began in the Manhattan federal courtroom of Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, it was revealed that one of Oscar winner Spacey’s key defense lawyers Jennifer Keller has Covid.
Fellow defense attorney Chase Scolnick told Kaplan that Keller tested positive this morning and has symptoms. The combative lawyer, who earlier this week relentlessly tore at Star Trek: Discovery actor Rapp’s assertions that Spacey fondled and trapped the then-14-year-old back in 1986 on the defendant’s bed without his consent at a theater party, was not in the courtroom today.
When the news was made public, the 63-year-old Spacey immediately put a mask on while seated at the defense table.
Kaplan, citing courthouse Covid protocols, ruled that all 12 jurors and 10 people in the courtroom — including all of the defense team, their first row of supporters in the gallery and at least one Rapp lawyer, Richard Steigman — will have to get two rounds of tests on Sunday and Tuesday. “First focus is on the jury and on trying to save the trial if we can,” the judge said sternly.
Everybody who was exposed to Keller at close range said they are fully vaxxed. But several people in the courtroom asked for test kits, which will be provided. And everyone who has to get tested must now also be masked.
Meantime, the trial that began October 6 will continue — “at least provisionally,” Judge Kaplan said, before calling for a short break.
Testimony then resumed, with psychologist Lisa Rocchio telling the court that Rapp suffers from PTSD, whose onset was delayed and only became full-blown diagnostic PTSD around 2017, triggered by increasingly unavoidable exposure to Spacey via the latter’s high public profile and The New York Times‘ bombshell revelations about Harvey Weinstein causing Rapp to reflect on his own experiences.
Today’s wild turn of events comes after Rapp finished his testimony Wednesday. Keller’s cross-examination of Rapp lasted nearly five hours over two days as she repeatedly targeted apparent inconsistencies and vague elements of the actor’s recollection of the events and why he took his story to BuzzFeed.
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 House of Cards Emmy nominee faces trial in the UK for 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.
Sean Piccoli and Erik Pedersen contributed to this report.
Best of Deadline
Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
