Johnny Depp Jury Finds That Amber Heard Defamed Him in Op-Ed

Actor Johnny Depp’s defamation case against his ex-wife Amber Heard has slammed the country for six weeks, including the ridiculous accusations of physical abuse, in the spotlight of #MeToo’s accusations and counter-accusations. Provided a rare case. Courtroom public spotlight.

Seven jury trials in Fairfax, Virginia, said Wednesday in a 2018 editorial at the Washington Post that Depp was “a public figure representing domestic violence,” Depp was honored by Mr Hard. I discovered that it had been damaged. Mr. Depp has been awarded more than $ 10 million in damages.

During the trial, Mr. Depp violently denied Mr. Haad’s accusations of repeated physical abuse such as punching, head-butting and sexual assault. In a post-verdict statement, Mr. Depp thanked the jury for “regaining my life.”

Mr. Haad, who was in court when the verdict was read, said in a subsequent statement that she was “beyond words” disappointed with their findings.

“I’m afraid that the mountain of evidence wasn’t enough to counter my ex-husband’s disproportionate power, influence, and upset,” she said.

Mr Haad didn’t seem encouraged by the fact that the jury had given her $ 2 million in damages. This agrees that she has been defamed by Mr. Depp’s lawyer. A spokesman for Mr. Haad at Ala Fairhall said she would appeal.

Such cases are often settled out of court, in part to avoid public oversight. The bitter accusations and embarrassing details in this case were broadcast not only in public courts, but also in front of cameras that broadcast all accusations on television and live streams, where they were turned into memes and discussed on social media.

2018 Editorial Mr. Haad wrote that no mention was made of Mr. Depp’s name, but he argued that it was a mistake, clearly showing their marriage, which began in 2015 and collapsed a little over a year later. did. (The early draft was drafted by the American Civil Liberties Union, where Mr. Haad was an ambassador focused on women’s rights and gender-based violence.)

The jury agreed and found that it was false and contained some statements made with actual malicious intent.

Mr Haad argued that one of Depp’s lawyers at the time was disgraced in 2020, when he dismissed her charges as “hoaxes” in a statement against the British tabloids. The jury found that Mr. Depp had defamed Mr. Hard, alleging that the lawyer had damaged the couple’s penthouse and accused him of blaming him.

The ruling surprised several legal observers who pointed out two years ago that a British judge ruled that there was evidence that Mr. Depp had repeatedly attacked Mr. Haad. The ruling was filed in a defamation proceeding filed by Mr. Depp after Sun, a British tabloid, called him a “wife’s beater” in the headline. The judge in that case ruled that the defendants had shown that what they had announced was “substantially true.”

Mr. Haad, 36, claimed through the trial that everything in the editorial was true.

The combination of star power, sensational detail, and cameras in court turned the court into an obsession with the Internet. The number of memes and posts that attack Mr. Hard, created by Mr. Depp’s super fans, has skyrocketed online. Mr Haad testified that she had been threatened with thousands of murders since the start of the trial, calling her online ridicule “pain.”

Occasionally sobbing at the stand, Mr. Hard testified more than a dozen times, she said, Mr. Depp was violent against her. In an important incident in Australia in 2015, Mr. Haad said Depp became “warlike” after taking her drug MDMA, attacking her, grabbing her neck, and at some point she Said that he sexually attacked with that thing. She heard she later decided that she was a bottle.

“I’m looking in his eyes and I’m not looking at him anymore,” Mr. Hard testified. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

Attorney McKenna White, who advises people on the risks of publishing accusations of potentially disputed sexual misconduct, worries that Hard’s online ridicule may be less likely to come forward. He said he was doing it.

“The absolute destruction of Amber Heard will have an impact,” White said. “If you’re worried about what happens when you speak up, this can have the same chilling effect we’ve been trying to reverse over the last few years.”

Others saw the online reaction as a precursor to the jury’s decision.

“Currently, millions of Americans are weighting as evidence is revealed in court,” said Alan Dershowitz’s lawyer, Imran Ansari, in a defamation proceeding involving Virginia Jufre. This can be seen as an indication of how the case is proceeding. ” Jeffrey Epstein was a victim of sex trafficking and accused Dershowitz of being part of it, but he denied it.

Depp, 58, gave a very different account of their relationship with Haad as an invader and his trip to Australia. Mr. Haad, who he testified to, was a girlfriend who once looked “too good for the truth,” but he was a partner who cursed him, called him a sneaky name, beat him, and threw things at him. became.

In Australia, he testified, she threw the handle of an exploding vodka in his hand and amputated his finger. (She denied throwing a bottle at him and said she hit him only in self-defense or in the defense of her sister.)

In his testimony, Depp, a major star known for his films with Tim Burton, including Edward Scissorhands, and Captain Jack Sparrow’s portrayal of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, is Hard. The decline of his acting career against the accusations of.

“It’s very strange to be Cinderella one day and then Quasimodo in 0.6 seconds,” Depp testified. “And I didn’t deserve it.”

Several witnesses summoned by Mr. Depp’s lawyer included police officers and actor employees who remembered that Mr. Haad appeared to be unharmed when he reported that he had been bruised. , Disputed Mr. Hard’s explanation of the violence.

Others include his agent who testified that the actor had lost $ 22.5 million in trading to replay his role in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise after Mr. Haad’s editorial was published. He upheld Mr. Depp’s allegations of reputational damage. (Disney’s production executive who testified said there was no reason to believe that the decision not to cast Mr. Depp was related to the editorial.)

Some of Hard’s witnesses, including her sister and a former make-up artist, testified that she had seen Hard’s injury when the abuse was reported. Her sister, Whitney Henrikes, said she saw her aggressively hitting Mr. Hard while Mr. Depp wore a cast from a finger injury.

Proceedings in Virginia often brought the couple and many of their associates to the stage of giving some of the most intimate, embarrassing, and often contradictory explanations for their relationship.

The text from Mr. Depp referred to Mr. Hard using insults and obscenity like “worthless prostitutes”. The audio recording captured Mr. Hard, who calls Mr. Depp “washed out” and “a joke,” and other recorded discussions that appear to agree to be violent to each other.

Depp’s substance use and past opioid addiction were frequently mentioned, but his lawyer claimed he never claimed to be a saint. He wasn’t just an abuser.

“I’m not embarrassed. I know I’m doing the right thing, so I said about the personal disclosure required in the trial.”