FOLS ČERČ, Va. (AP) - After a six-week trial in which Johnny Depp and Amber Heard separated due to nasty details of their short marriage, both sides told the jury exactly the same thing on Friday - they want their lives back.
Heard “ruined her life by falsely telling the world that she survived domestic abuse by Mr. Depp,” Depp’s lawyer, Camille Vasquez, told the jury in his closing argument at the defamation trial against his ex-wife.
Herd’s lawyers, meanwhile, said Depp ruined Heard’s life by launching a defamation campaign against her when she divorced him and publicly accused him of the 2016 attack.
“In Mr. Depp’s world, you don’t leave Mr. Depp,” said Herd’s lawyer, J. Benjamin Rottenborn. “If you do that, he will launch a campaign of global humiliation against you.
Depp hopes the trial will help restore his reputation, even though it has turned into a spectacle of a vicious marriage, with broadcast cameras in the courtroom filming every turn in front of a growing audience as fans respond on social media and stand in line overnight for coveted seats in courtrooms.
“This case for Mr. Depp has never been about money,” said Depp’s lawyer, Benjamin Chev. “It is about Mr. Depp’s reputation and his release from the prison in which he has lived for the last six years.
Depp is suing Heard for $ 50 million in the Fairfax District Court in Virginia because of a 2018 article she wrote in The Washington Post describing herself as “a public figure who represents domestic abuse.” His lawyers say he was slandered by the article even though his name was never mentioned.
Heard filed a $ 100 million lawsuit against the former star of “Pirates of the Caribbean” after his lawyer called her allegations a fraud. Although the counterclaim received less attention at the trial, Herd Elaine Bredehoft’s lawyer said that it gives the jury the opportunity to compensate for Heard’s abuse that Depp inflicted on her even after they broke up orchestrating the defamation campaign.
“We ask you to finally hold this man accountable,” she told the jury. “He never accepted responsibility for anything in his life.
The seven-member civil jury began its discussion on Friday at 3 p.m.
Depp says he never hit Hurd and that she made up allegations of abuse. He said Heard physically attacked him several times.
“There is an abuser in this courtroom, but it is not Mr. Depp,” Vasquez said.
During the trial, Hurd testified about dozens of episodes of physical and sexual assault that she said Depp inflicted on her.
In the end, Vasquez noticed that Herdova had to revise her testimony about when she first said she was hit. Hurd said Depp hit her after she inadvertently laughed at one of his tattoos. Hurd initially said it happened in 2013 - after a fairytale year of courtship and romance - but later corrected herself and said it happened in 2012, very early in their relationship.
“Now she has suddenly erased a whole year of magic in this courtroom,” Vasquez said.
The jurors saw several photos of Hurd with traces and bruises on his face, but some photos show only slight redness, and others more severe bruises.
Vasquez accused Herd of taking photos and said that the evidence that Herd embellished some of her injuries was proof that all her allegations of abuse were unfounded.
“Either you believe in everything or none of it,” she said. “Either she is a victim of ugly, horrible abuse, or she is a woman who is ready to say absolutely everything.
At the end of Herd, Rothenborn said that complaining about Herd’s evidence of abuse ignores the fact that there is huge evidence on her behalf and sends a dangerous message to victims of domestic violence.
“If you didn’t paint, it didn’t happen,” Rothenborn said. “If you painted, they are fake. If you haven’t told your friends, they’re lying. If you tell your friends, they are part of a scam. ”
And he rejected Vasquez’s suggestion that if the jury thinks Heard might be embellishing an act of abuse, they must ignore everything she says. He said that Depp’s defamation lawsuit must fail if Hurd suffered even one incident of abuse.
“They’re trying to make you think Amber has to be perfect to win,” Rothenborn said.
When the jury is bigger, it will have to focus not only on whether there was abuse, but also on whether Herd’s work can be considered legally defamatory. The article itself mainly focuses on the political issues of domestic violence, but Depp’s lawyer points to two paragraphs in the article, as well as the online headline that they say defames Depp.
In the first paragraph, Hurd writes that “two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic violence and I felt all the power of the anger of our culture.” Depp’s lawyers call it a clear reference to Depp, since Heard publicly accused Depp of domestic violence in 2016 - two years before she wrote the article.
In the second paragraph, she says: “I had a rare point of view, in real time, of how institutions protect men accused of abuse.
The online headline reads “Amber Heard: I spoke out against sexual violence - and faced the wrath of our culture.”
“She did not mention his name. She didn’t have to, “Chu said. “Everyone knew exactly who and what Mrs. Herd was talking about.”
Herd’s lawyers said that Herd could not be held responsible for the title because she did not write it, and that the two paragraphs in the article are not about the accusations of abuse, but about how Herd’s life changed after she made them.
Rothenborn told jurors that even if they tend to believe Depp’s claim that he never abused Hurd, he still can’t win his case because Hurd is entitled to the First Amendment to influence issues of public debate.