Good points. I think people are also more willing to overlook Depp’s drug use than Heard’s manipulative behaviour. The jury must have gotten to the point of hoping she wouldn’t look at them just this once for a change in tactics. Didn’t appear to be a persuasive move as it turned out.
At least this trial has forced us to re-examine the whole “believe the woman” concept, as it undermines the principles of natural justice. Some people do abuse, and some are falsely accused.
What exactly did she win for? Haven’t been able to find it.
Amber won her counter-suit and was awarded $2m from Depp.
Johnny won $10m+$5m for a total of $15m, however, the $5m is reduced to $350k due to laws capping (the type of) punitive damages he was awarded.
All in all, she’ll be paying him $8,350,000
…If you don’t “believe the woman/victim,” then why would there be any investigation of the alleged incident in the first place? If you don’t believe the victim, then no crime took place and you have no reason to look at the accused at all. He/she walks, right?
If those lawyers are on the ball (and when their own remuneration is at stake, the ball tends to get close scrutiny) I suspect that Heard will be paying Depp $10,350,000 of which Depp’s lawyers will take their percentage; and Depp will be paying Heard $2,000,000 of which Heard’s lawyers will take their percentage.
I wonder if Uncle Sam gets a cut in both directions too, or if there is netting for tax purposes?
Oh, Jeez.
I can consider someone’s claims without automatically assume they are valid before I see evidence.
What the hell is “natural justice?”
Then I guess there are differing opinions of what the phrase actually means. Which isn’t a shock, given recent history.
“Good cases make bad law.” This would be exactly the wrong lesson to take from this situation.
The fact is that the vast majority of abusers are never publicly accused, and never called to account, for a range of reasons, including that victims are afraid of the backlash if they speak up.
And the number of “false accusation” cases are tiny in comparison.
I think what this case is a better illustration of–in the broader perspective–is that extreme wealth is perversive. We should have a hard cap on wealth as a factor of the overall median. Regardless of a person’s success, we should all have to share the same world.
Do you believe the victim could ever be lying? Or not telling the whole truth? Why not “believe the accused”? Or innocent until proven guilty? You seem to have missed the point of what this trial was actually about.
No decisions rendered until allegations have been investigated thoroughly. “Believe the victim” undermines that concept. Do you still believe Amber Heard?
Having watched a bit of this, it was interesting and not unexpected that Depp would win. There are a number of attorneys on YouTube that provide commentary, which I found much more interesting than the main news sources.
The attorneys point out that even though Heard won on one count, it was an overwhelming victory for Depp. The consensus among them was the Heard’s testimony was really unbelievable.
This is an interesting video by one of these YouTube lawyers following the case. The attorney calls his channel Law and Lumber to reflect both is vacation and hobby.
The video is 20 minutes so here’s a quick summary:
In Amber’s testimony, apparently she testified that Johnny attacked her on her bed, and in the process, broke the bedframe with his boot.
This part of the video should be her claim again him concerning his attack on her and how the bed broke. Should start at 8 min 44 seconds.
The attorney then goes through and demonstrates how it would be impossible to break that type of bed frame with a boot and the the type of splintering would be caused by an edged tool.
Then, he showed that the photo of the splintered bed that was entered into evidence had something that looked like a folding knife on it. In his opinion, she faked the story.
Other channels showed that there were other serious problems with the photo evidence Amber provided. These attorneys said that they started off neutral but her over-the-top accusations, combined with bad evidence, bad body language, terrible inconsistencies, crazy stories without evidence and such all convinced them that she was lying.
Make no mistake, Johnny is not a sympathetic character, but at least he admitted his flaws, where she never did.
Background disclaimer: (TLDR, I don’t normally follow famous people)
I’m not a big celebrity guy so I had never heard of Amber Heard before, wasn’t aware of the marriage, divorce, or the controversies until the headline popped up on the UK trial, but I didn’t pay any attention.
The only reason I became aware of this is that I sometime watch an attorney who pokes fun of SovCits and count yourself lucky if you don’t know that that means.
I actually found the trial to be interesting, not because of the parties involved, whom I don’t care about, but the legal aspects of the case and the explanations from various actual attorneys.
Why did this trial catch fire on Youtube to such a degree? That was something that was really disconcerting-all of the “Depp’s lawyer DESTROYS Amber’s testimony!” The breathless excitement of it.
Yes, the glee over being able to attack Heard was disturbing.
I’m glad it’s over because it was dominating local news much more than it deserved. Now they can all go home and we don’t have to hear any more about it… right?
She was practically a cartoon villain on the stand.
Amber Heard presented herself as a victim of abuse at the height of the MeToo movement and as a noble warrior for women’s causes:
Blockquote I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out
It’s not surprising that people who aren’t sympathetic to the MeToo movement would take pleasure in seeing one of its public proponents brought down. And it’s disappointing for actual victims that Ms. Heard apparently invented much of the abuse that claimed to have suffered.
Until the next time a wealthy, loved and famous person is accused, which never happens.
I’m someone that followed this case only at the very very end, because I finally got curious as to “why are so many people talking about this and seemingly taking sides in what should be a private matter.”
As far as I can tell, Heard absolutely did defame Depp, but a UK court in ruling against Depp’s claim that British newspapers defamed him found that something like 12 allegations of violence against him were “substantially true.” I feel like Depp supporters have largely chosen to simply not accept this, and this was not actually adjudicated significantly, as far as I can tell, in this trial. The matter of whether Heard defamed Depp in her Washington Post article didn’t directly address the 12 specific allegations that were covered in the British trial, at least not in a comprehensive way. It frankly seems likely to me that both Depp and Heard were toxic, abusive people. The fact that Heard is toxic and abusive doesn’t make Depp automatic good guy when he was the same. My impression is these are people who certainly should not have been in a relationship, and no one should feel like either is a “side” for them to back.
I don’t agree with Depp’s being exiled from his industry over it necessarily, he was in a destructive and toxic relationship and paid costs for that, but I’m not sure a tumultuous marriage breakup even one that involves violence on both sides should immediately be the end of your career.
As long as it’s not tried in a Virginia courtroom, I may be able to avoid the amount of coverage this one got. The local news stations wasted soooooooo much time on this story.