Charge against Kevin Spacey dropped after alleged victim pleads the 5th

Massachusetts prosecutors on Wednesday dropped a criminal case against actor Kevin Spacey, a week after a man who accused him of assault pleaded the fifth on the witness stand.
Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe said the decision was made "due to the unavailability of the complaining witness," according to a court filing.
Spacey, 59, had faced criminal charge of indecent assault and battery in connection with a July 2016 incident where he was accused of groping a young man at a Nantucket bar. The former "House of Cards" star had pleaded not guilty and faced up to five years in prison, if convicted.
The alleged victim, who CNN is not naming, exercised his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in a July 8 pre-trial hearing focused on the disappearance of a cell phone he used the night of the alleged assault and questions about whether he deleted text messages.
"My client and his family have shown an enormous amount of courage under difficult circumstances," Mitchell Garabedian, the attorney who represented the young man, said Wednesday.
Spacey's attorney, Alan Jackson, did not immediately return a telephone call and email seeking comment Wednesday.
Key piece of evidence missing
The accuser's missing cell phone was a key piece of evidence.
During the alleged assault, the accuser sent text messages on his phone, including a less-than-one-second-long video, to his girlfriend.
A Nantucket judge had ordered Spacey's accuser, his mother -- Heather Unruh, a former TV news anchor in New England -- and their attorney to turn over the phone so defense experts could examine it.
The accuser and Unruh testified the last time they saw the phone was before Unruh delivered it to prosecutors in December 2017.
Spacey's defense team claimed exculpatory evidence may have been deleted from the phone before it was given to police and prosecutors. Jackson, one of Spacey's lawyers, told the judge in the July hearing they believed the accuser and Unruh "deleted things off the phone... . They sanitized the phone."
Spacey's accuser testified he didn't delete anything from the phone.
Unruh testified she "deleted a few things," but she did not say what. There was "no intent on my part," she testified.