Judge Orders Kevin Spacey Accuser To Turn Over Phone
NANTUCKET (CBS) - The young man who has accused Kevin Spacey of groping him at a bar in 2016 must hand over the phone he used that night, a judge has decided.
On Monday, Spacey's attorney, Alan Jackson, demanded access to the cellphone of Spacey's accuser, claiming deleted material may be able to help Spacey establish his innocence.
The 59-year-old actor, who has pleaded not guilty to a charge of indecent assault and battery, faces up to 2 ½ years in jail if convicted.
In court documents, Jackson accused the man of deleting text messages that support Spacey's claims of innocence.
In court Monday, Jackson said the accuser's mother, former Boston TV anchor Heather Unruh, told investigators she deleted anything from his phone related to his "frat boy activities" before turning it over to authorities.
"Are you kidding me? Heather Unruh took it upon herself to physically remove exculpatory information from the phone before she handed it to the government. And the government never told us," said Jackson.
Spacey's attorney urged the court to order prosecutors to hand over a "complete and unaltered" forensic copy of the accuser's cellphone, saying newly produced evidence confirms he "deleted exculpatory text messages and provided falsified screenshots of his conversation from the night in question to law enforcement."
On Friday, the judge issued an order that the phone is to be turned over to state police to be picked up by the defense "for a full forensic imaging or extraction of the phone's contents."
Unruh said Spacey got her son drunk and then sexually assaulted him at the Club Car, a popular restaurant and bar on Nantucket.
Unruh's son told police he wanted to get a picture with Spacey and went over to talk to him after his shift ended at the Club Car, where he worked as a busboy.
The man said Spacey bought him several drinks and tried to persuade him to come home with him before unzipping the man's pants and groping him for about three minutes.
The accuser told police he tried to move Spacey's hands, but the groping continued, and he didn't know what to do because he didn't want to get in trouble for drinking. The man said he fled when Spacey went to the bathroom.
Spacey's lawyers have called the allegations "patently false" and accused the man of lying in the hopes of making money in a civil case against Spacey. They argued the two engaged in nothing more than "consensual flirtation."
The lawyer for the family, Mitchell Garabedian, did not have a comment about the judge's decision.