People have been keeping a tab on the ongoing defamation trial between Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard. With explosive testimonies from both sides, the trial, which is standing at its endpoint and awaits the verdict, is currently under deliberations by the jury. In a recent update, jurors – in their first full day of deliberations on Tuesday – posed a question to the judge about how they should weigh the headline of Heard’s 2018 Washington Post op-ed. The op-ed plays a crucial role as Depp is suing Heard for 50 million dollars, claiming that her article was defamatory and further affected his career.
Judge Azcarate stated that the jurors were wondering if they must consider the headline was defamatory or whether that should be connected to the content of the statement, everything in the op-ed, Deadline reported. The headline of the December 2018 article read: “I Spoke Up Against Sexual Violence-And Faced Our Culture’s Wrath. That Has To Change”
On the jury verdict forms, the headline is one of three statements that the jurors have to weigh in before deciding whether to rule for Depp. The other two statements are “Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out” and “I had the vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.” The jurors have to also make a decision on whether the statements in Heard’s op-ed are defamatory or not.
Although in the trial, Heard’s legal team stated that Depp is not mentioned anywhere in the article or the headline, the latter’s legal team made an argument that it was clear to readers who his ex-wife was referring to when she claimed to be a domestic violence survivor. Heard has also stated a few times during her testimony that she wrote the op-ed for the actor because she wanted the world to know what she went through.
Amid the trial, Depp was seen performing at Jeff Beck’s concert at Royal Albert Hall in London where he scored a standing ovation from the audience, moment has gone viral on social media.
Johnny Depp performing with @jeffbeckmusic at the Royal Albert Hall : standing ovation from the audience and a crowd waiting for him outside
He won. pic.twitter.com/V3eV3FDpPm
— elisa (@deppressead) May 31, 2022
Back in 2020, Beck and Depp had sung a cover of John Lennon’s Isolation.
