In closing arguments, Amber Heard’s legal team urged the jury to ‘consider the message’ Johnny Depp and his legal team are sending Heard and ‘by extension any victim of domestic abuse.’
I’ll take the floor now. ‘If you didn’t take photographs, it didn’t happen,’ Heard’s lawyer Benjamin Rottenborn said on Friday. If you did take photos, they are phony. Your buddies are lying if you didn’t inform them. If you did inform your buddies about the scam, they’re all in on it.’
‘Failure to seek medical attention meant you were not injured,’ Rottenborn said. ‘If you do seek medical treatment then you’re crazy and if you do everything to help your spouse rid himself of drugs and drink then ‘you’re a nag.’
Rottenborn continued, ‘And if you decide enough is enough and you have to leave to save yourself you’re a gold digger. That’s the message Mr. Depp is asking you to send.
He said that in Johnny Depp’s ‘world’ you don’t leave him, and if you do ‘he will start campaign of global humiliation against you.
‘He will do everything he can to destroy your life, to destroy your career. That’s what they’re trying to get you to be an accomplice to.’
‘Mr. Depp cannot and will not take responsibility for his own actions.’
Heard’s other lawyer Elaine Bredehoft said that it was a ‘really big lie’ that Depp wanted to get his reputation back as he already lost a similar case in London in 2020.
‘Here we are for six weeks of your time. Six weeks of this court’s time. For what? For nothing? Only to go after Amber.
‘That’s psychological abuse because he wants to put her through this again.’
Bredehoft asked the jury to ‘finally hold this man responsible – he’s never accepted responsibility for anything in his life.’
She said: ‘We’re asking you to hold him legally responsible for his actions and to fully and fairly compensate Amber for what he has done by creating this concept of a hoax. We don’t want another lawsuit, we want to leave Amber alone and get on with her life.
Bredehoft said that Heard ‘intends to honor her pledges’ to donate $3.5million to the ACLU and $3.5million to the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
She said: ‘She has to get out from under this first. Who would blame a woman for giving $1million in charitable donations. That sounds like psychological abuse to me.’
Turning to the question of damages, Bredehoft said that Heard testified that the case has ‘destroyed her life, it has consumed her.’
‘They were threatening to put her daughter in a microwave for god’s sake. She can’t get away from this. As she said, I’m a human being, no human being should be put through this’.
When Depp sued for $50million, Heard ‘sent a message’ by suing him back for $100million’, Bredehoft said.
While they were not expecting that full amount, they wanted the jury to ‘fully and fairly compensate Amber for everything she’s been through both in terms of reputation and emotional distress.’
On top of that they wanted the jury to impose $350,000 for punitive damages, Bredehoft said.
At one point, cell phones began going off in court during Heard’s closing statement. The judge said it was an ‘Amber Alert’ which is a child abduction alert system to ask the public for help in finding abducted children.
Rottenborn said that the key question for the jury was whether the First Amendment gives Heard the right to write her op-ed for the Washington Post.
Should she be allowed to describe the ‘hell’ she had gone through, Rottenborn asked.
He said, ‘You cannot simultaneously protect the First Amendment and find in favor of Johnny Depp.’
Rottenborn said that if the jury believes what Heard wrote is true then that’s the end of the case. Rottenborn said that Depp’s lawyers have criticized Heard for not speaking about the sexual abuse she suffered at his hands sooner.
He said: ‘People who have suffered that, they don’t want to broadcast to the world. It’s ridiculous, insulting, victim blaming at its most disgusting.’
According to Rottenborn, the whole case ‘is about blaming Amber Heard for things she didn’t do.’
He said: ‘That’s what Mr. Depp does, blame other people and refuse to take accountability but the problem is he’s running headlong into the US constitution.’
Referring to the headline on the article, he added: ‘You cannot hold Amber Heard liable for words she did not publish.’
Rottenborn called the abuse Heard suffered at the hands of Depp ‘heinous.’
He said, ‘Let me be very clear, if Amber was abused by Mr. Depp even one time then she wins.
‘We’re not just talking about physical abuse, we’re talking about emotional abuse, psychological abuse, financial abuse, sexual abuse. That’s what we’re talking about.’
Addressing the jury Rottenborn said that ‘he’s trying to fool you to believing….never a single time was he in any way abusive to Miss Heard. That’s absurd.’
The case is ‘not about who is the better spouse’ and if the jury think Depp and Heard were both abusive then they have to find in her favor.
Turning to the evidence, Rottenborn read out a text Depp sent to his ‘drug buddy’, the British actor Paul Bettany, in 2012 at the start of the relationship talking about how they wanted to ‘drown’ Heard and ‘f**k her burnt corpse to make sure she is dead’.
Rottenborn called it ‘some of the most vile, disgusting language you could ever imagine’.
In 2016 after Heard filed for divorce, Depp texted a friend saying he wanted to see that ‘c****rotting corpse decomposing in the f**king trunk of a Honda Civic’.
Rottenborn said: ‘These words are a window into the heart and mind of America’s favorite pirate. This is the real Johnny Depp
The same text promised to subject Heard to ‘global humiliation’ which Rottenborn said was ‘one of the only promises to Miss Heard that Mr. Depp has ever kept.’
The jury were shown the video of Depp smashing up his kitchen and drinking a ‘mega pint’ of wine.
Introducing it, Rottenborn said: ‘Let’s see the monster. Let’s see the monster in the flesh’.
He said: ‘Mr Depp knows he can turn into a monster. He got up here and tried to deny that to you. Talk about lack of accountability.’
The court has heard evidence that Heard is laughing at the end of the video.
But Rottenborn said: ‘You see Miss Heard laughing in that? She’s not laughing in that
‘Mr. Depp is laughing and making snide remarks but it’s not a laughing matter. Who does that?
Imagine being in Amber’s shoes…you’ve seen it before you’re praying it won’t’ happen again but deep down you know it will. You want him to change. Imagine watching your husband, the person you love behaving that way, like a wild animal. That’s abuse. THat’s domestic abuse’.
Turning to the specific incidents, Rottenborn dismissed the witnesses who testified on behalf of Depp as they were ‘on his payroll.’
Rottenborn said it was ‘sickening’ that Depp texted Heard she was a ‘lesbian camp counselor’ while she flew of his island in the Bahamas with his daughter after he became drunk and abusive.
The flight from Boston to Los Angeles when Depp passed out moaning ‘like an animal’ was an example of ‘Depp the monster’, Rottenborn said.
Depp was ‘controlling’ and had a ‘jealous rage’, once writing to Heard that ‘I have other uses for your throat which do not include injury’.
Rottenborn called this ‘vile’ and said that it showed how Depp ‘thinks about women…it’s disgusting.’
The idea that Heard created the photos of herself with bruises made no sense, the lawyer claimed.
Rottenborn asked sarcastically that Depp’s lawyer Camille Vasquez ‘has the nerve to say why didn’t she video it.’
He said: ‘As she’s being hit she’s supposed to grab a video camera with one hand while defending herself with the other?’
Rottenborn said that Heard would have to be the ‘dumbest person in the world’ to stage one such incident the night before she was due to go on the James Corden show, as happened in May 2016.
The evidence of abuse was ‘absolutely overwhelming’, Rottenborn said.
Rottenborn urged the jury not to send a message to abuse victims that ‘no matter what you do as an abuse victim you always have to do more’.
By finding for Depp they would tell victims that ‘no matter how honest you are about your own imperfection in a relationship you need to be perfect in order for people to believe you’.
Rottenborn said that Heard’s op-ed was ‘not a hit piece’ and that Heard took advice from her lawyer at the ACLU.
By contrast Depp used his lawyer Adam Waldman as an ‘attack dog’ to spread lies about Heard.
Depp has already lost a libel case in London at the High Court in 2020 when a judge ruled the claim he was a ‘wife beater’ was ‘substantially true’.
Rottenborn said: It’s time to tell Mr. Depp this was his last chance. Tell him to move on with his life, tell him to let Amber move on with her life.
‘Stand up for freedom of speech. This trial is about so much more than Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, it’s about freedom of speech, stand up for it, and protect it.’
Johnny Depp’s team delivered closing arguments Friday in the blockbuster defamation trial that has raged on for six weeks.
Depp’s all-star attorney Camille Vasquez began by labeling Amber Heard an ‘abuser’.
‘There is an abuser in this courtroom but it’s not Mr. Depp. There’s a victim of abuse in this court but it’s not Miss Heard,’ Vaquez said. ‘Miss Heard is in fact the abuser and Mr. Depp is the abused.’
Vasquez noted expert accounts that diagnosed Heard with Borderline Personality Disorder and called the actress a ‘deeply, troubled person’ who is ‘desperate for attention and approval.’
It is six years ago to the day that Amber Heard filed a restraining order against Depp, which Vasquez said ‘ruined’ the actor’s life.
‘On May 27th 2016 Miss Heard walked into a courthouse in Los Angeles, California to get a no notice ex parte restraining order against Mr. Depp and in doing so ruined his life by falsely telling the world she was a survivor of domestic violence against Mr. Depp.
‘Today on May 27 2022, exactly six years later, we asked you to give Mr. Depp his life back by telling the world that Mr. Depp is not the abuser Miss Heard said he is and hold Miss Heard accountable for her lies.’
What’s at stake is this man’s good name, what’s at stake is a man’s life that he lost when he was accused of heinous crimes and the life he could live when he’s finally vindicated,’ Vasquez said.
‘Six years ago today Miss Heard filed a false report of domestic violence against her husband of 15 months, Johnny Depp. It was a set up, she tipped off the paparazzi so they would be waiting.
‘They knew where she
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