A London jury made its way through three weeks of evidence presented, argued over, and battled back and forth between prosecution and defense to find actor Kevin Spacy not guilty of the charges of sexual assault that all but ended his career over the past few years. The 64-year-old actor, known for roles in The Usual Suspects, Seven, and L.A. Confidential, to name but a few, has always denied the counts of sexual offenses leveled at him by four men who said Spacey assaulted them between 2001 and 2013.
Now that he had been found by a court to be not guilty, one still must wonder how many will accept the verdict as a true assessment of the facts or simply hold onto what they always wanted to assume. Yes, this innocent-until-proven guilty petard has pretty much always existed. Still, in this day and age of firestorm social media yawping and virtue signaling, people dig in with their opinions like never before.
Additionally, in Spacey’s favor, a New York jury found him not liable for battery on actor Anthony Rapp when it was reported Spacey picked Rapp up and laid on top of him after a party in 1986. Still, be it Trump, J.K. Rowling, Neil deGrasse Tyson, it doesn’t matter what you might not have done or said; people are as much poised to be offended as they are to accuse because we all now have platforms to declare our righteous indignation and be part of a conversation we feel can’t go on without us.
The hypocrisy that allows Will Smith to not only assault Chris Rock in front of a million-strong viewing audience and still win the Best Actor Oscar during the same broadcast, with no real consequence to Smith, save being banned from the Oscars, but will see us hold and declare self-assured verdicts contrary to those handed down by courts of law is stupefying.
But it will continue.
How can it not?
We are human, we judge.
So, what comes of Kevin Spacey’s reputation now?
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