Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard: Jury interrupts deliberations to ask question

Jurors in the trial in the defamation case brought by Johnny Depp, 58, against ex-wife Amber Heard, 36, which takes place in a courthouse in Virginia, in the United States, stopped deliberations on Tuesday (31) to ask a question, according to the New York Post.

The seven jurors were confused about one of the eight questions they need to answer, which determines whether Heard defamed her ex-husband Depp when he wrote an editorial for The Washington Post in 2018, describing himself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” “.

The question was whether they think the editorial’s headline — which read: “I Speak Out Against Sexual Violence — and Faced the Wrath of Our Culture” — is false.

Judge Penney Azcarate said the jury wanted to know whether the question was related to just the headline itself or the entire editorial. She said she would instruct jurors to consider the headline and not the editorial as a whole. “The statement is the headline and not the entire editorial,” the judge said.

In addition to the headline, jurors had to consider whether two sentences in Heard’s editorial defamed Depp. In the first passage of the text, the actress wrote that “two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse and felt the full force of the wrath of our culture”.

In the other excerpt, Heard wrote, “I had the rare advantage of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.”

According to the verdict form given to the jurors, the jury must consider whether the headline and passages were about Depp, whether they are false, whether each of them has a “defamatory implication” and whether Heard intended to defame her ex-husband. .

Jurors also need to assess whether Heard acted with “real malice”, which requires “clear and convincing evidence” that she knew what she was writing was false or that she acted with reckless disregard for the truth.