The seven-member jury set to judge the trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has approached the court with a question. It was about Heard’s famous article in the Washington Post.
The spectacular trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard lasted seven weeks, now everything is in the hands of the jury: the seven-member jury is currently deliberating on the verdict. After the closing arguments on Friday, they sat together for the first two hours, on Tuesday – after a holiday weekend in the USA – they came together again. And after another seven hours of debate, we had the first questions to the court.
It was about details of Johnny Depp’s defamation lawsuit. Depp is suing his ex-wife over a Washington Post article she wrote. Specifically because of three specific passages, including the title line. And that’s exactly what the jury wanted: They wanted to know from the court whether they should evaluate the title individually or as part of the whole opinion article.
Amber Heard vs. Johnny Depp: Judgment Highly Awaited
“I spoke out against sexual violence and faced the wrath of our society. This has to change,” read the headline in the 2018 text. The other critical passages for which Depp is suing Heard for $50 million are the sentence “I’ve had the rare opportunity to see first-hand how men accused of violence are protected by institutions.” And a passage in which Amber Heard describes herself as a “public figure who stands up for domestic violence”. Heard filed a $100 million counterclaim.
The judge instructed the jury for the defamation lawsuit to decide only whether the headline itself was wrong, regardless of the rest of the text. The jury’s question appears to relate to the closing arguments of Heard’s attorney, who appealed that even if the jury did not believe all of Heard’s allegations, the text was correct.
The public is eagerly awaiting the decision. The process was filmed by cameras and broadcast live on TV and YouTube every weekday. The film stars accuse each other of damaging each other’s careers and being violent.
Which: “TMZ”, “AP”
