The jury in Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s bombshell defamation trial will resume deliberations Tuesday morning after a three-day break for the Memorial Day weekend.
The seven-person panel — which spent simply two hours deliberating on Friday — is ready to reconvene within the Fairfax, Virginia, courthouse round 9 a.m. to proceed weighing the proof they heard during the last six weeks.
Depp, 58, is suing his ex-wife for $50 million in defamation over her 2018 Washington Publish essay, by which she wrote about going through “our tradition’s wrath” as a “public determine representing home abuse.”
The “Pirates of the Caribbean” star says that despite the fact that the piece didn't title him, it sullied his fame and price him eight figures in potential earnings.
Heard, 36, fired again with a $100 million countersuit, claiming that Depp’s lawyer Adam Waldman destroyed her profession and made her life hell by telling the press in 2020 that she had fabricated her home abuse allegations.
Jurors should determine who defamed whom, and will rule in favor of one of many two, neither, and even each.
Depp flew to England shortly after closing arguments wrapped on Friday, and joined his good friend rocker Jeff Beck, 77, on stage at Sheffield Metropolis Corridor on Sunday to carry out covers of John Lennon’s “Isolation,” Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing.”
Two days earlier in court docket, Depp’s lawyer instructed the jury that the actor was the actual sufferer of home abuse in his former relationship with Heard.
“There may be an abuser on this courtroom, however it's not Mr. Depp,” Camille Vasquez mentioned in her closing assertion. “Miss Heard is actually the abuser and Mr. Depp is the abused.”
Heard made up the abuse allegations as a result of she’s a “deeply troubled individual” determined for consideration, Vasquez alleged.
She requested the jurors to “give Mr. Depp his life again by telling the world that Mr. Depp will not be the abuser Miss Heard mentioned he's and maintain Miss Heard accountable for her lies.”
After Depp’s crew completed, Heard’s lawyer Ben Rottenborn instructed the jury that “If Amber was abused by Mr. Depp even one time, then she wins.
“And we’re not simply speaking about bodily abuse,” he mentioned. It additionally included “emotional abuse, psychological abuse, monetary abuse, sexual abuse.”
He argued that Depp’s true self had been revealed in court docket by the vulgar texts he despatched about his spouse, by which he fantasized about her “rotting corpse.”
“Girls and gents, these phrases are a window into the center and thoughts of America’s favourite pirate,” the lawyer mentioned.
It’s unclear how lengthy the jury will deliberate and if and the way a lot they may award to the respective events.
Their determination will mark a near Depp and Heard’s doomed relationship, which the general public has been following for greater than a decade.
The couple met in 2009 whereas filming the big-screen adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s “The Rum Diary,” by which Depp performs a journalist who takes a job in Puerto Rico and falls in love with Heard’s character.
They have been each seeing folks on the time, however reunited in 2012 when single and started so far.
Depp proposed to Heard in 2014 and so they have been married in an early 2015 ceremony on Depp’s personal island within the Bahamas.
Heard filed for divorce and requested the court docket for a brief restraining order in opposition to Depp in Might 2016.
“Our relationship was intensely passionate and at occasions risky, however at all times sure by love,” the pair mentioned in a joint assertion launched following the divorce. “Neither celebration has lied nor made false accusations for monetary acquire. There was by no means any intent of bodily or emotional hurt.”
However their relationship didn't finish there. Heard has alleged she was sexually, bodily and emotionally abused by Depp.
Depp beforehand sued British publication the Solar for libel for calling him a “wife-beater” in an article.
He misplaced his court docket battle within the UK — the place it’s considered simpler to win a libel case than within the US — and his present combat in Virginia was extensively seen as his final likelihood to remake his legacy and get better from the abuse allegations.
Depp, who has at all times denied the allegations, instructed the court docket upon taking the stand that he sued Heard to “clear my title.”
Heard, in the meantime, mentioned the swimsuit has haunted her and he or she desires to depart this all prior to now.
“That is horrible. That is painful. And that is humiliating for any human being to undergo,” she mentioned in her remaining plea to the jury final week.
“Within the harassment and humiliation, the marketing campaign in opposition to me that’s echoed each single day on social media. And now in entrance of cameras on this room. Each single day I've to relive the trauma,” she cried.
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