Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamation trial wraps: What happens now?
Johnny Depp’s explosive six-week trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard has officially wrapped with closing statements today - here’s what will happen next.
The murky and sometimes puzzling defamation trial between actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has had us on the edge of our seats for six weeks.
The court battle between Depp and Heard has become one of the most talked about due to it being live streamed on YouTube and featuring the testimonies of high-profile celebrities like Elon Musk, James Franco and Kate Moss.
However, like any good film, it has to end with lawyers for the famous couple wrapping up the case with their closing statements today.
The jury has been dismissed to deliberate, with a verdict expected to be reached by Tuesday, US time. However, it could come even sooner.
Here is when you can expect to learn all the juicy details about the verdict along with what that decision might be.
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Why Johnny Depp is suing his former wife, Amber Heard
Johnny Depp, 58, launched legal proceedings against his former wife Amber Heard, 35, for USD $50 million (AUD $69,822,650) for allegedly defaming him in 2018 by writing an opinion piece for the Washington Post about her experience as a victim of domestic violence.
While Ms Heard did not explicitly name Mr Depp in the article, she did say that she “became a public figure representing domestic abuse” two years before and that she “felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out”.
“Friends and advisers told me I would never again work as an actress – that I would be black-listed. A movie I was attached to recast my role. I had just shot a two-year campaign as the face of a global fashion brand, and the company dropped me. Questions arose as to whether I would be able to keep my role of Mera in the movies “Justice League” and “Aquaman”, Ms Heard wrote at the time.
“I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse”, Ms Heard wrote.
Mr Depp – in his court documents – alleged that the sentences referred to above amounted to defamation and constituted irreparable harm to his career and reputation.
“The op-ed’s clear implication that Mr Depp is a domestic abuser is categorically and demonstrably false”, Mr Depp’s court documents said. “Her allegations… are part of an elaborate hoax to generate positive publicity for Ms Heard and advance her career.”
Ms Heard snapped back by filing a USD $100 million (AUD $139,645,300) counterclaim against Mr Depp which alleges that Mr Depp’s lawyers have smeared her by referring to her allegations as “fake” and a “sexual violence hoax”.
The duo originally met on the set of The Rum Diary in 2009 and married in February 2015. After a mere fifteen months, they called their marriage quits. Both parties assert that their former partner was physically violent towards them during their relationship and vehemently deny the claims of the other. The divorce between the parties was finalised in 2016.
In the courtroom: The most explosive evidence
Over 40 witnesses found themselves in the witness box at the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.
Below are some of the most explosive claims made by witnesses which provided the jury and viewers with horrifying insight into the toxic relationship between Mr Depp and Ms Heard.
Amber Heard accused Johnny Depp of physical abuse
In her testimony, Ms Heard claimed that the first time that Mr Depp was physically violent towards her was in 2013 when he struck her three times after she mocked one of his tattoos.
“I will never forget it,” Ms Heard said from the witness box. “It changed my life.”
During the trial, Ms Heard also gave evidence about many other instances where Mr Depp hit her, pushed her against the wall and threw items at her like a phone.
Lawyers representing Ms Heard seemingly thought they had substantiated their client’s claims by exhibiting photographs of her bruised face, violent text messages that Ms Heard had received from Mr Depp and audio of Ms Heard asking Mr Depp to put a knife down.
On cross-examination, Mr Depp’s lawyer, Camille Vasquez, wasted no time casting doubt on Ms Heard’s claims about her former partner abusing her physically.
For example, Ms Heard had previously testified that Mr Depp punched her in the face and broke her nose after they attended the Met Gala together on May 5, 2014.
“At the Met Gala, he was accusing me of flirting with a woman. We get back to the hotel room, he shoves me and grabs my collarbone. I remember he threw a bottle at me, missed me, hit the chandelier,” Ms Heard said from the witness box.
According to Ms Heard’s account, Mr Depp allegedly then broke her nose.
“We were struggling, he’s bigger than me. He hit me, I remember my nose being swollen, red. I made a remark to my friend of how bad”, Ms Heard explained.
When cross-examining Ms Heard, Ms Vasquez showed the court photographs of Ms Heard and Mr Depp after their alleged violent fights which depicted the “Aquaman” actress with no distinguishable injuries.
One photograph, in particular, showed Ms Heard without any bruises next to Mr Depp at Spike TV’s “Don Rickles: One Night Only” special on May 6, 2014 – the day after she alleged that the actor broke her nose after the Met Gala in 2014.
“For the record, I don’t know that it was broken,” Ms Heard said when Mr Depp’s lawyer, Camille Vasquez quizzed her about her alleged injuries. “You should have seen how it looked under makeup.”
“Your nose doesn’t appear to be injured in any of these pictures, does it Miss Heard?” Ms Vasquez questioned.
“I’m wearing makeup,” Ms Heard replied.
“And makeup covers swelling, right?” Ms Vasquez asked the actress.
“Makeup will not cover up swelling, ice will though,” Heard said in response.
“Ice will cover up swelling?” Vasquez questioned.
“Ice reduces swelling,” Ms Heard said. “Normally the swelling after that kind of injury is not as bad as you might imagine and for me it wasn’t that bad. I have a picture of it underneath the makeup, that’s how I know how to reference it.”
“A picture you haven’t produced or shown to this jury,” Ms Vasquez replied.
“I produced everything,” Ms Heard said.
“But you haven’t shown it to this jury,” Ms Vasquez responded.
“I would very much like to,” Ms Heard said. “It’s not my job”.
Ms Heard alleged that Mr Depp sexually assaulted her
During the course of her testimony, Ms Heard gave a detailed account of an incident that occurred between her and Mr Depp in March 2015.
About a month into their marriage, the actors visited Australia while Mr Depp was filming the fifth “Pirates of the Carribean” movie.
Ms Heard gave evidence that a dinner between the pair led to an altercation between her and Mr Depp. She accused Mr Depp – who had been drinking – of pushing her up against the fridge and holding her with a tight grip around the neck.
When she eventually escaped Mr Depp’s clutches, Ms Heard testified that she went upstairs before coming back in her nightgown to find Mr Depp awake and “belligerent”. The actress said that Mr Depp threw bottles that shattered around them, tore off her nightgown and threw her on a table tennis table before placing a bottle into her vagina.
“He was shoving it inside of me over and over,” Ms Heard said from the witness box while she sobbed. According to Ms Heard, Mr Depp said over and over “I’ll f***ing kill you”.
Ms Heard’s story was very different to Mr Depp’s who vehemently denied sexually assaulting his former wife. Mr Depp informed the jury that Ms Heard was the one who threw things and struck him with a bottle of vodka which severed the top of his right middle finger. Mr Depp’s lawyers exhibited evidence of his visit to the hospital to fix the injury.
In the witness box, Mr Depp admitted that he used his bloody finger to profanely write on the walls to remind Ms Heard of all the lies she had told him, saying that he was “broken”.
Mr Depp accused Ms Heard of being the antagonist
Throughout his time in the witness box, Mr Depp characterised Ms Heard as the aggressor and the person who started their quarrels that led to physical arguments.
The actor said that he “never struck Ms Heard in that way, nor have I struck any woman in my life” and that the actress subjected him to name-calling which was “demeaning”.
“It could begin with a slap. It could begin with a shove. It could begin with throwing a TV remote at my head, throwing a glass of wine in my face,” Mr Depp explained to the jury.
“It’s hard to explain, but the argument would start here, but it would roll around and become this circular thing of its own,” Mr Depp said. “You’d get back to the beginning. … Now it’s heightened even more and it’s still circular. There’s no way in or out.”
In his evidence, Mr Depp admitted that he had consumed drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism to deal with the psychological abuse inflicted on him by Ms Heard.
Lawyers for Mr Depp backed up their client’s allegations about Ms Heard with an audio recording where Ms Heard admits to striking Mr Depp on the face of it.
In another piece of audio tendered by Mr Depp’s legal team, Ms Heard says: “Tell people it was a fair fight and see what the jury and judge think. Tell the world, Johnny. Tell them, ‘I, Johnny Depp, I’m a victim too of domestic violence, and it was a fair fight,’ and see if people believe or side with you.”
Mr Depp also called a bunch of witnesses to back up his claims.
Ms Depp’s sister, Christi Dembrowski, gave evidence that Ms Heard called Mr Depp “an old fat man.” A marriage counsellor that Ms Heard and Mr Depp attended upon during the course of their relationship, Laurel Anderson, testified that “mutual abuse” had occurred between the couple. Security personnel for Mr Depp said that they had never observed Mr Depp striking Ms Heard but that their relationship was unpredictable.
Ms Heard responded to Mr Depp’s allegations by saying that she only hit him in self-defence and for her sister Whitney Henriquez’s protection.
In the witness box, Ms Henriquez claimed that Mr Depp became angry when he learned that Ms Heard had viewed text messages on his phone from an ex-girlfriend. She said that the former married couple then fought with Ms Heard yelling at Mr Depp from the mezzanine of their apartment.
“He’s calling her a fucking whore, fucking cunt, used-up trash bag,” Ms Henriquez testified. “They were saying horrible things to one another. She was calling him old and fat. It was a fight.”
When Ms Henriquez went to the top of the stairs to console her sister, she gave evidence that Mr Depp ran up to her and hit her on the back.
According to Ms Henriquez’s evidence, Ms Heard yelled at Mr Depp “Don’t hit my fucking sister!” and struck Mr Depp’s face.
Ms Henriquez also gave evidence that Mr Depp requested her to sign a non-disclosure agreement, a request which was refused by Ms Henriquez.
Kate Moss testified that Johnny Depp never pushed her down a flight of stairs
For context, between 1994 and 1998, Kate Moss and Johnny Depp dated.
Ms Moss was required to give evidence in circumstances where Ms Heard had testified that Mr Depp had pushed Ms Moss down a flight of stairs while they were at a resort in Jamaica.
In her evidence, Ms Moss asserted that she had slipped down the stairs and Mr Depp checked if she was okay.
“I screamed, because I didn’t know what had happened to me, and I was in pain,” Ms Moss explained in the witness box. “And he came running back to help me and carried me to my room and got me medical attention.”
“We were leaving the room, and Johnny left the room before I did,” Ms Moss went on to say. “And there had been a rainstorm. And as I left the room, I slid down the stairs and I hurt my back.”
Johnny Depp undertook a violent ‘cavity search’ on Amber Heard
From the witness box, Ms Heard accused Mr Depp of becoming enraged and alleging that she invited advances from another woman when they were away with friends on May 2013.
When the two returned to their trailer, their argument escalated. Ms Heard testified that Mr Depp ripped her dress, tore her underwear and inserted his fingers inside her vagina.
“He proceeds to do a cavity search,” Ms Heard said. “He’s looking for his drugs, his cocaine.”
Earlier in the trial, a clinical and forensic psychologist, Dr Dawn Hughes, testified that Ms Heard had told her the same story about the ‘cavity search’.
“Even though she yelled and hit him and said some terrible things to him, it was never able to shift the balance of power in the relationship,” Dr Hughes said.
Dr Hughes – who had spent 29 hours with Ms Heard over Zoom and in her office – also testified that Ms Heard “demonstrated very clear psychological and traumatic effects” from assertions made by Mr Depp’s lawyer, which led to Ms Heard‘s countersuit against Mr Depp.
“I diagnosed Ms Heard with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder… and the cause was the intimate partner violence by Mr Depp,” Dr Hughes said.
Psychologist Dr Shannon Curry who was called by the lawyers for Mr Depp gave evidence in the trial that Ms Heard has “histrionic and borderline personality disorders” and “grossly exaggerated symptoms of PTSD”.
When will the verdict be handed down
On Friday 27 May 2022, the legal teams for Mr Depp and Ms Heard made their closing statements.
Depp’s team painted him as a victim of what they say are Heard’s false allegations of physical, sexual and psychological abuse, that have destroyed his career and reputation.
In sharp contrast, Heard’s lawyer Benjamin Rottenborn called Depp “a monster” who not only abused his ex-wife, but continued an ongoing smear campaign after Heard filed for divorce. “In Mr. Depp’s world, you don’t leave Mr. Depp,” he said. “If you do, he will start a campaign of global humiliation against you.”
The jury was excused so they can consider their decision.
The jury’s deliberations may take minutes, hours or even several days depending on how long they need.
It is expected they will reach their verdict by Tuesday, as Monday is Memorial Day in the US.
The type of verdict that the jury may deliver
What the jury will need to determine in this case is whether, on the balance of probabilities (in other words, 51 percent or greater), Ms Heard smeared Depp through the article she penned in 2018.
If the jury reaches a decision that Ms Heard did indeed defame Mr Depp, Ms Heard will be required to pay Mr Depp damages to the tune of what he is asking for. The jury will also give their opinion to the judge about if Ms Heard deserves more or less compensation.
If the jury believe Ms Heard’s version of events and make a finding against Mr Depp, Ms Heard will not have to pay him any sum of money. However, Mr Depp could have to pay her up to USD $141 million ($196m), if the jury does not say to the judge that this figure should be adjusted.
The third alternative is that the parties settle outside the courtroom. However, given how acrimonious this court battle has been, that is unlikely to happen.
More Coverage
Remember that this is a civil defamation case, not a criminal matter. You do not go to prison from a civil finding.
“The only way what happened so far in Virginia could lead to jail is if she’s accused and convicted of perjury, which there has been no official accusation of and which seems quite remote”, lawyer George Freeman of the Media Law Resource Centre told Fox News.
Under the law in Virginia, committing perjury comes with a 10-year prison term. However, obtaining such an outcome would require prosecutors to prove that Ms Heard had intentionally lied in court – an extremely high standard that is difficult to substantiate.
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