By means of Related Press
FALLS CHURCH: After a six-week trial wherein Johnny Depp and Amber Heard tore into every different over the nasty main points in their quick marriage, all sides advised a jury the very same factor Friday — they would like their lives again.
Heard “ruined his lifestyles via falsely telling the sector she was once a survivor of home abuse by the hands of Mr. Depp,” Depp legal professional Camille Vasquez advised the jury in ultimate arguments in his libel trial in opposition to his ex-wife.
Heard’s legal professionals, in the meantime, stated Depp ruined Heard’s lifestyles via launching a smear marketing campaign in opposition to her when she divorced him and publicly accused him of attack in 2016.
“In Mr. Depp’s international, you don’t go away Mr. Depp,” stated Heard’s legal professional, J. Benjamin Rottenborn. “Should you do, he’ll get started a marketing campaign of world humiliation in opposition to you.”
Depp is hoping the trial will assist repair his popularity, even though it has become a spectacle of a vicious marriage, with broadcast cameras within the court shooting each twist to an increasingly more rapt target market as lovers weighed in on social media and coated up in a single day for coveted court seats.
Johnny Depp’s legal professional Camille Vasquez offers ultimate arguments on the Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse in Fairfax. (Picture| AP)
“This situation for Mr. Depp hasn’t ever been about cash,” stated Depp legal professional Benjamin Bite. “It’s about Mr. Depp’s popularity and releasing him from the jail wherein he has lived for the ultimate six years.”
Depp is suing Heard for $50 million in Virginia’s Fairfax County Circuit Courtroom over a 2018 op-ed she wrote in The Washington Submit describing herself as “a public determine representing home abuse.” His legal professionals say he was once defamed via the item even if it by no means discussed his identify.
Heard filed a $100 million counterclaim in opposition to the previous “Pirates of the Caribbean” celebrity after his legal professional referred to as her allegations a hoax. Regardless that the counterclaim has won much less consideration on the trial, Heard’s legal professional Elaine Bredehoft stated it supplies an road for the jury to compensate Heard for the abuse Depp inflicted on her even once they break up via orchestrating a smear marketing campaign.
“We are asking you to in spite of everything grasp this guy accountable,” she advised the jury. “He hasn’t ever permitted accountability for the rest in his lifestyles.” The seven-person civil jury started its deliberations at 3 p.m. Friday and completed for the day about two hours later. They’re going to resume Tuesday.
Depp says he by no means struck Heard and that she concocted the abuse allegations. He has stated he was once the only bodily attacked via Heard more than one occasions. “There may be an abuser on this court, however it isn’t Mr. Depp,” Vasquez stated.
All the way through the trial, Heard testified about greater than a dozen episodes of bodily and sexual attack that she stated Depp inflicted on her.
Vasquez, in her ultimate, famous that Heard needed to revise her testimony concerning the first time she stated she was once struck. Heard stated Depp hit her after she inadvertently laughed at considered one of his tattoos. Heard to begin with stated it took place in 2013 — after a fairy-tale 12 months of courtship and romance — however later corrected herself to mention it took place in 2012, very early of their courting.
“Now on this court she has all of sudden erased a complete 12 months of magic,” Vasquez stated. Jurors have noticed more than one pictures of Heard with marks and bruises on her face, however some pictures display most effective gentle redness, and others display extra critical bruising.
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Vasquez accused Heard of doctoring the pictures and stated proof that Heard has decorated a few of her accidents is evidence that each one her claims of abuse are unfounded.
“You both imagine it all or none of it,” she stated. “Both she is a sufferer of unpleasant, terrible abuse, or she is a girl who’s keen to mention just about anything.”
In Heard’s ultimate, Rottenborn stated the nitpicking over Heard’s proof of abuse ignores the reality there is overwhelming proof on her behalf and sends a perilous message to domestic-violence sufferers.
“Should you didn’t take footage, it did not occur,” Rottenborn stated. “Should you did take footage, they’re faux. Should you did not inform your folks, they are mendacity. Should you did inform your folks, they’re a part of the hoax.”
And he rejected Vasquez’s recommendation that if the jury thinks Heard may well be embellishing on a unmarried act of abuse that they’ve to omit the whole thing she says. He stated Depp’s libel declare should fail if Heard suffered even a unmarried incident of abuse. “They are seeking to trick you into pondering Amber must be highest to win,” Rottenborn stated.
When the jury deliberates, it is going to need to focal point now not most effective on whether or not there was once abuse but in addition on whether or not Heard’s op-ed piece may also be regarded as legally defamatory. The item itself focuses most commonly on coverage questions of home violence, however Depp’s legal professional level to 2 passages within the article, in addition to a web based headline that they are saying defamed Depp.
Within the first passage, Heard writes that “two years in the past, I turned into a public determine representing home abuse, and I felt the entire drive of our tradition’s wrath.” Depp’s legal professionals name it a transparent connection with Depp, for the reason that Heard publicly accused Depp of home violence in 2016 — two years sooner than she wrote the item.
Actor Amber Heard’s legal professional Benjamin Rottenborn speaks throughout ultimate arguments on the Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse in Fairfax. (Picture | AP)
In a 2d passage, she states, “I had the uncommon vantage level of seeing, in real-time, how establishments give protection to males accused of abuse.” The net headline reads “Amber Heard: I spoke up in opposition to sexual violence — and confronted our tradition’s wrath.”
“She did not point out his identify. She did not need to,” Bite stated. “Everybody knew precisely who and what Ms. Heard was once speaking about.”
Heard’s legal professionals stated Heard cannot be held responsible for the headline as a result of she did not write it, and that the 2 passages within the article don’t seem to be concerning the abuse allegations themselves however how Heard’s lifestyles modified after she made them.
Rottenborn advised jurors that although they have a tendency to imagine Depp’s declare that he by no means abused Heard, he nonetheless cannot win his case as a result of Heard has a First Modification proper to weigh in on issues of public debate.