Why Johnny Depp lost trial in the UK but won in the US

BBC News Brazil

In 2020, actor Johnny Depp, 58, lost a lawsuit in the UK he filed against the Sun newspaper. But on Wednesday (1st), he won a similar case against his ex-wife Amber Heard in a US court.

At the start of the most recent trial, many legal analysts argued that Depp had a lower chance of winning than in the UK case because the US has strong protections for free speech.

The fact that the jury found Heard guilty of defamation over an article in which she claimed to have been a victim of domestic violence means that they did not believe her testimony.

Mark Stephens, a media lawyer, told the BBC it was “very rare” for the same case tried in the two countries to have different outcomes.

He believes the main factor influencing Depp’s US victory was the fact that his US trial was decided by a jury. The judgment in the UK, because of an article in which he was called a “wife abuser”, was decided by a judge.

“Amber Heard was heavily defeated in the court of public opinion and on the jury,” he said.

In both the UK and US trials, Depp’s lawyers claimed that Heard had lied – to make this point, they attacked her personality and said she was, in fact, the abusive person in the relationship.

This is a common defense tactic in sexual harassment and domestic violence trials, known as “denying, attacking and reversing victim and abuser” or “Davo” (the initials of the words in English), Stephens says.

The strategy tries to turn the tables on the alleged victim, shifting the debate from “the accused committed abuse” to “is the alleged victim credible?”.

“They deny doing anything, they deny that they were the perpetrators, and they attack the credibility of the individual who reported the abuse, and then they reverse the roles of victim and perpetrator,” says Stephens.

In the UK trial, Stephens says the judge recognized the strategy and rejected a lot of evidence that didn’t directly answer whether Depp had committed the violence or not.

“Lawyers and judges don’t usually fall, but it’s very, very effective against juries,” he said. Men tend to believe the arguments of strategy more, but female jurors are also susceptible.

“People have a model in their heads of what a victim of abuse can look like and behave, and of course we know this is often false.”

Hadley Freeman, a Guardian journalist who covered both cases, told the BBC that another big difference was the fact that the US trial was broadcast on TV, which made the case “almost a sports game”.

Every turn of the trial was watched by millions of people – many of whom took to social media to express support for Depp.

On TikTok, the hashtag #justiceforjohnnydepp (justice for Johnny Depp) has had around 19 billion views. The jury was instructed not to read about the case on the internet, but they were not isolated and were able to keep their cell phones.

Freeman further thinks that the general public’s criticism of Head was a side effect of “#MeToo” (a movement by which women reported being abused).

“‘Believe in women’ (motto promoted by the “#MeToo” movement) seems like a very old-fashioned thing when it comes to Amber Heard,” she says.