Kevin Spacey criminal groping case dropped by prosecutors due to accuser's 'unavailability'

The criminal groping case against Kevin Spacey is over: Prosecutors in Nantucket, Massachusetts, announced late Wednesday they are dropping the charge that he sexually assaulted a teen bus boy in an island bar in the summer of 2016.

Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe filed a "Nolle Prosequi" document on Nantucket, declaring the case is dropped "due to the unavailability of the complaining witness."

At an eyebrow-raising pretrial hearing in the case last week on Nantucket, the accuser, William Little, now 21, abruptly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination while being questioned about the mysterious disappearance of his cellphone and whether he or his mother had deleted texts from the night in question.

That led Judge Thomas Barrett to strike all his testimony from earlier in the hearing, and led to doubts about whether Little would be able and willing to testify for the prosecution against Spacey.

Thus ends the only criminal case brought so far against Oscar-winning Spacey since he became one of the first Hollywood figures to be accused of multiple allegations of sexual misconduct beginning in November 2017. 

Spacey is still under investigation in Los Angeles and London, where multiple men have accused him of sexual assault in episodes dating back decades. 

Little's attorney, Mitchell Garabedian said in an email to USA TODAY that he would have no comment other than this: "My client and his family have shown an enormous amount of courage under difficult circumstances."

There was no immediate comment from Spacey's Los Angeles-based attorney, Alan Jackson.