Kevin Spacey’s lawyer urged a U.K. jury on Thursday to exonerate the “House of Cards” actor, arguing that it is “not a crime to have sex, even if you’re famous.”

In his closing arguments, Spacey’s barrister Patrick Gibbs KC told jurors to be “sure” of their verdict, whichever way it may go. “If you’re sure that he’s guilty, you’ll convict him,” Gibbs said. “And if you’re anything less than sure it will be your duty — it might even be your pleasure — to find him not guilty.”

Spacey is facing nine counts of sexual assault against four men. On Wednesday, four counts were dropped due to a “legal technicality.”

The most serious charge — causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent — remains. It carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The four alleged victims, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have each testified over the course of the last four weeks alongside their family and friends. The oldest complaint chronologically, which dates back to an unspecified year in the early 2000s, alleges that Spacey repeatedly touched the alleged victim’s genitalia and bottom over his clothing and put the man’s hand on his own genitalia. The court heard that on the final occasion, Spacey grabbed the man — who was driving — so hard on the crotch that he almost caused a car crash.

Spacey’s defense is that there was a “consensual” relationship and that the actor never went any further than the alleged victim was comfortable with. He says the near-crash crotch grab, which was alleged to have taken place on the way to an event at Elton John’s Windsor home, never happened.

The second alleged victim said Spacey made aggressive sexual comments to him in 2005 before grabbing him by the crotch at a charity event. The actor claimed the account was entirely fictional. The third complainant, who met Spacey at a pub in Gloucestershire in 2015 before going back to the actor’s rented house with a group of friends to continue the party, said Spacey tried to kiss him and also grabbed his crotch. Spacey called the encounter a “clumsy pass” that he later apologized for.

The fourth and most serious complaint related to a 2008 incident in which a man came back to Spacey’s apartment in London where, he told the court, he fell asleep or passed out and awoke to find Spacey performing oral sex on him. Spacey said the encounter was consensual and provided phone records to show there had been continued contact during that evening and in the months that followed.

In their closing argument on Wednesday, the prosecution urged the jury to consider the similarity in the cases. But on Thursday, Spacey’s lawyer suggested that the allegations “undermined” each other.

“It is easy to make up allegations against a man in Mr Spacey’s condition,” he said. “By which I mean a man who is promiscuous, a man who is not publicly out, although everyone in the business knows he’s gay. A man who wants to be just a normal guy, to drink beer and laugh and smoke weed and sit in the front [seat of a car] and spend time with younger people who he’s attracted to.”

The barrister, who has been practicing for almost 40 years, also cautioned the jury not to be swayed by Spacey’s promiscuity or sexual orientation. “It is not a crime to like sex and it is not a crime to have sex, even if you’re famous. And it is not a crime to have casual sex and it is not a crime to have a lot of sex and it is not a crime to have sex with someone of the same sex, because it’s 2023 and not 1823,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs also challenged the prosecution’s claims of a power imbalance between Spacey and his alleged victims, gesturing behind him to where the actor has been sat locked in a transparent box alongside court security throughout the trial.

“You might spare a moment to think where the imbalance of power lies in [the court] process and where Mr Spacey — sitting all on his own with a jailer behind the glass — where he registers in the balance of power in this court,” Gibbs said. “This is not a sob story, [but the defense] labour against the disadvantage of having to prove a negative a long time later.”

Speaking to a packed and captivated courtroom, Gibbs used his closing argument to forensically revisit each alleged victim’s complaint and suggest to the jury why it was flawed.

“The reality is that false allegations, even apparently convincing false allegations, really do happen,” he said. “Not always, but really do sometimes happen, especially where fame and money and sex and secrets and shame and sexual confusion are all in the mix.”

Of the near-crash crotch grab, Gibbs said it was a “fiction that is designed to dramatize and dignify a reimagining long after the events of all that really happened between the two men.” He also said that the date of the alleged incident had been disproved via documents and testimony from Elton John and his husband David Furnish, as well as Spacey’s method of travel to the Windsor event.

Gibbs then turned to the charity event, at which Spacey was alleged to have made sexually aggressive comments before pinning the complainant to a wall and grabbing his penis. “There are some words that draw attention,” Gibbs said. “Cock is one, fuck is another, suck is a third.”

“Heard by no one,” he concluded, pointing to testimony from a number of individuals who had been in charge of the charity event and denied hearing Spacey make any sexual comments or seeing him assault someone.

“Might you have in front of you, for all his charm, a fantasist?” Gibbs asked the jury of the complainant.

Of the most serious complaint, in which Spacey is accused of performing oral sex on a man while asleep or unconscious, Gibbs pointed to phone records which he said disproved the alleged victim’s version of events. The man claimed he had been unconscious for around five hours, until the early morning while Spacey said the consensual encounter had lasted around two hours before the man’s demeanor changed and he rapidly left the apartment. Spacey’s “ancient” phone records showed he made a 19-second call to the man at around half past midnight and a series of calls and messages over the next few months.

When questioned about the phone records in the witness box, the alleged victim said he’d never received any subsequent calls or texts from Spacey and suggested the actor may have used “malware” to make it appear as though they had been sent.

“Malware which generates random text messages to people you’ve given a blow job to?” Gibbs said in his closing statement. “You might say someone’s been watching too much CSI.”

The lawyer also questioned the man’s claim he’d “fallen asleep” at Spacey’s apartment. “Things were so boring, so soporific in the Oscar winner’s flat that he nodded off?” Gibbs asked, his voice laden with disbelief.

Gibbs sought to paint Spacey as a distinctly unstarry man, saying it was “understandable” that he might want to get drunk in a local pub in Gloucestershire where people call him “K-dog” rather than “Lex Luthor.” “That he might find it at least as interesting as to stand on a red carpet and grin for the camera with someone else who’s won an Oscar,” Gibbs said.

The lawyer also touched on Spacey’s “cancellation” after the allegations against him by actor Anthony Rapp first broke in 2017. He twice referred to the “monsterization” of Spacey and praised John and Furnish for their “bravery” in agreeing to be witnesses for the defense.

Gibbs said despite the “obvious risks of association with a man whose name has become toxic,” the duo had agreed to testify via videolink from Monaco on Monday regarding Spacey’s presence at their annual White Tie and Tiara Ball in the early 2000s, as well as whether the actor had ever visited their Windsor home during any other occasion.

“To their everlasting credit, [John and Furnish] stood and counted as witnesses in the defense of a man who has been universally canceled,” Gibbs said. “Risking the wrath of the internet themselves no doubt to be associated with a man who has not been allowed to work for the last six years.”

After Gibbs finished his closing statements, Spacey approached the lawyer and patted him on the back, apparently in gratitude.

On Monday, the jury will retire to consider the verdict.