Kevin Spacey returns to court on Nantucket for sex assault case pre-trial hearing

Actor Kevin Spacey made a surprise appearance on Monday in a Nantucket courtroom for another pretrial hearing in his sexual assault case, at which his defense attorney blasted the accuser and his mother for allegedly deleting exculpatory text exchanges from the son's phone before turning it over to investigators. Citing a forensic extraction report concerning the alleged victim’s phone recently turned over to the defense, Spacey’s attorney Alan Jackson made the case during an hourlong hearing that the accuser and his mother, former Boston ABC affiliate WCVB anchor Heather Unruh “cleansed” the phone of any information that could help exonerate Spacey before turning it over to police. Cape and Islands Assistant District Attorney Brian Glenny did not address in court on Monday the issues raised by Jackson about texts or other information allegedly being deleted from the phone before it was turned over to authorities, and a civil attorney for the accuser did not immediately respond to calls for comment about Jackson's claims. On Thursday last week, among a series of rulings on motions in the case, Barrett granted access by Spacey's attorneys to six months of the alleged victim's text messages following the alleged incident, and the surveillance video from the Club Car from 5 p.m. July 7, 2016 to 3 a.m. July 8, according to court records. On Friday of last week, defense attorneys charged in a new court filing that the accuser deleted exculpatory text messages from the time surrounding his encounter with Spacey before turning over screenshots of text exchanges to the police -- and charged that the district attorney’s office knew this and “hid” it from the defense until now.