Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard: Jury enters third day of deliberations

The jury examining the defamation suit brought by actor Johnny Depp, 58, against his ex-wife Amber Heard, 36, returned to court on Wednesday (1st) to continue deliberations. The stage enters its third day, still without a final verdict.

On Tuesday afternoon (31), the jurors interrupted the deliberations to ask a question. The group of seven was confused about one of the eight questions they need to answer, which determines whether Heard defamed her ex-husband.

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.

In addition to the headline, jurors had to consider whether two other sentences in Heard’s editorial defamed Depp. 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 has a “defamatory implication” and whether Heard intended to defame her ex-husband. .

The actor asks Heard for US$50 million for an opinion piece that the actress published in an editorial for The Washington Post in December 2018, in which she describes herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse”.

Heard, on the other hand, is asking for US$100 million in his counter-accusation, alleging that he suffered “unrestrained physical violence and abuse”. The two started dating in 2011, got married in 2015 and the following year they filed for divorce, finalized only in 2017.