Can the Court Make Me Sign Something That Says I Can Never Give a Legal Report or Bare Witness Again
When Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard face off — again — in a Fairfax, Va., court Monday, the $fifty million defamation trial will lay bare their doomed spousal relationship. But the two may be sparring with ghosts likewise as each other, friends and family members told The Postal service.
The star-studded witness lists include Heard's former lover Elon Musk, histrion James Franco, "WandaVision" star Paul Bettany, Ellen Barkin, representatives from Disney and Warner Bros. as well as the ACLU and the LAPD and at least one nurse.
Among the evidence is previously unseen police bodycam footage from i of the ex-couple's altercations, as well as explosive text messages betwixt Depp and Bettany.
Depp and Heard will also accept the stand.
Each has an army of lawyers and publicists coming in with guns blazing after Depp lost his libel trial against the Sun last summer, having sued the London paper for calling him a "wife beater" in a 2022 commodity. He said the charge was a lie and defendant his "sociopathic" ex-wife of all the violence in their spousal relationship. (During the London trial, Heard claimed that Depp was always the aggressor and any response from her was to defend herself.)
"Johnny's team had a certain strategy in going to the United kingdom to sue the Sun," a source shut to Heard's team told The Post. "The burden was on the Lord's day to prove in that location was corruption, not Johnny. [His lawyers] thought they'd go a reasoned judgment in their favor and bring that back to the US to utilise in this trial. Instead they lost. So they are starting this case with a meaning deficit and a much higher burden to encounter."
At stake this time is Depp's contention that Heard defamed him in a 2022 Washington Post op-ed implying he was a domestic abuser. The headline of Heard's piece read: "I spoke upward confronting sexual violence — and faced our culture's wrath. That has to modify."
Heard'due south essay did non mention Depp by proper noun merely he said the implication was clear that it was him.
The new trial will focus on whether Heard was telling the truth about Depp'south alleged corruption of her, including during their fiery May 2022 accident-up in Los Angeles, which led to their separation and to the actress first accusing Depp of domestic violence.
Merely the difference this time is that numerous expert witnesses, who were not allowed in the London trial, take either already submitted testimony or will do so in courtroom, sources said.
Two of the four LAPD police officers who responded to the 911 call from Heard'due south address on May 21, 2016, did not testify in London, but their testimony will exist heard in Fairfax — and, insiders say, could favor Depp's side.
Those officers carried bodycams and that footage will exist shown in court for the kickoff fourth dimension.
A person familiar with Heard's case said to expect "more doctors and psychiatrists, more pictures, more sound, more video and more documents showing in that location was abuse. Information technology will build on what was presented in London."
Heard'due south claim that she planned to requite her $7 million divorce settlement to the ACLU and the Children'southward Hospital will as well be put under a microscope, according to people familiar with the case.
Depp'southward team will nowadays evidence that they say shows the actress did not donate the money as promised.
But Heard'south side is expected to claim that the donations were promised every bit "pledges" and that she has non been able to fulfill those pledges — nevertheless — given the extensive post-divorce litigation.
Depp has 38 witnesses on his list and Heard has 81, although both have about the aforementioned number scheduled for in-person testimony. Some witnesses have already given testimony and will non announced in courtroom. Information technology was apparently impossible for Depp'southward team to subpoena Musk, given his security entourage, but he is on Heard'southward listing every bit planning to testify by video link.
Heard'south 1,530-item showroom list includes a text exchange between Depp and his "Avengers" co-star Paul Bettany, in which Depp writes: "Allow's burn Amber!!! … Let's drown her before we burn her!!! I will f—k her burnt corpse after to make sure she's dead."
Many who know the ex-couple, including LA private investigator Paul Barresi, can't understand why they are still going at it, suggesting both should move on and focus on restoring their careers and reputations.
"Johnny, and Amber Heard, should walk abroad," Barresi, who was once hired by Heard's team to await into Depp, said last month. "The time is long overdue for them to concentrate on their careers. They'd be better people for it."
Simply insiders familiar with both Depp, 58, and Heard, 35, who were married in 2022 and divorced in 2017, say the ex-spouses' long-running battle may seem like the "War of the Roses" — but really has more Freudian overtones.
Several sources close to Depp and Heard told The Mail service the histrion wants to clear his proper name for the sake of his kids (22-year-old extra Lily-Rose Depp and nineteen-yr-old Jack Depp, whose mother is Vanessa Paradis). Heard, meanwhile, is said to want to cease what she sees as Depp'southward continuing abuse of her.
Others said the drama surrounding the pair is more than likely rooted in their respective pasts, non the present.
"These are two people who had troubled, abusive childhoods," a source familiar with both Depp and Heard told The Post. "Bister had a difficult father that she in one case compared to Johnny, and Johnny's mother was very tough on him. Information technology may be why both of them keep fighting information technology out and not letting it get."
Shadowing the Texas-born Heard and Depp, a native of Owensboro, Ky., are the mutual histories of trauma they carried with them long before they met one another.
Amber one time compared Depp'due south alleged violence and substance corruption problems to her dad, 71-yr-old David Clinton Heard.
She testified during the London libel trial that, in March 2013, Depp went on a 36-hour cocaine and alcohol binge because he thought she was cheating on him. Heard too said that her begetter was abusive toward her mom, but her father's abuse wasn't as bad as Depp's.
"My father was tearing to my mother and they really loved each other …," Heard testified. "He [Depp] makes my dad look like a saint when he falls off the carriage. My dad struggled with alcohol abuse problems his whole life. He's an aficionado and he was very violent, but I dear him very much."
In the course of working for Heard against Depp, Barresi discovered that David Heard was once arrested, bedevilled, and served jail time for running a pit balderdash fighting ring in Texas in the 1980s.
Criminal court documents from Midland County, Texas, showed that David Heard ran a dogfighting ring with seven pit bulls on his 10-acre holding.
Heard was included in a report released Wednesday past the Centre for Countering Hate in London that outlines the corruption that some high-profile women confront online.
"Like many women, I had been harassed and sexually assaulted by the time I was of college age. But I kept tranquility — I did not wait filing complaints to bring justice. And I didn't see myself equally a victim," Heard wrote in her Washington Post essay. "So two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full strength of our civilization's wrath for women who speak out.
"Friends and advisers told me I would never again work every bit an actress — that I would be blacklisted. A moving-picture show I was fastened to recast my office. I had just shot a ii-year entrada as the face of a global way make, and the visitor dropped me," she continued.
Depp, meanwhile, has been aboveboard well-nigh his abusive childhood, saying that his mother, Betty Sue Palmer, who died in 2016, oftentimes beat him and threw objects at him, including an ashtray and a phone.
"My mom was maybe the meanest human being I have ever met in my life," he said at her funeral, although he also said he loved her very much.
A shut relative of Depp's, who spoke to The Post on condition that her name not be used, admitted that Betty Sue could be tough.
"She was born and raised in a little identify in Appalachia," she said. "Her dad drank and clobbered them. You tend to pass that on. She was rough, she was strict. She never wanted united states of america to turn into what she saw growing up."
Despite their hardscrabble life, however, the relative never saw Johnny be physically abusive in childhood or as an developed. She should know, she said, because she and Johnny frequently fought as kids and adults.
"Nosotros're of the same heed, nosotros know what buttons to push," the relative said. "I've been upwardly in his face and he's never touched me. I've never known him to physically injure anyone. He walks away. Johnny uses words and he will tell you off but he doesn't hitting. That's not who he is. It breaks my eye to come across him accused of all this."
The trial, which is expected to last six weeks, will be televised and may exist even more of a circus than Depp'south three-week 2022 defamation trial.
Depp claims that Heard'southward Washington Post piece damaged his reputation and concluded his iconic run as Captain Jack Sparrow in the "Pirates of the Caribbean area" franchise every bit well as his part in the "Fantastic Beasts" series.
In response to his defamation lawsuit against her, Heard filed a counterclaim of defamation asking for $100 meg.
"This case beingness brought to trial is proof that the court acknowledges the notable amount of preliminary wins, testify and witnesses in support of Johnny," a spokesman for Depp told The Post.
"To refuse the opportunity to articulate one's name and let someone who is taking advantage of the system to walk abroad with zero repercussions would exist careless and could set up a dangerous precedent for like situations in the future."
Heard'southward team has a dissimilar view.
"The Great britain Loftier Court of Justice has already institute that Mr. Depp engaged in at to the lowest degree 12 acts of domestic corruption against Amber in his libel suit against the London Sun," a spokeswoman for Heard told The Post. "At present he's seeking a different result in his libel conform against Amber."
"Amber Heard barbarous in dearest with Johnny Depp, and believed that if she could aid him stay clean and sober, he would stop the abuse and they could alive their fairy tale life together," she added. "Unfortunately, it became clear to Amber that she could non 'fix' Johnny, and the longer she stayed with him, the more she continued to be subjected to his emotional and physical abuse and risked her own prophylactic. This lawsuit is simply Johnny's mechanism to continue to abuse Amber."
Source: https://nypost.com/2022/04/07/johnny-depp-vs-amber-heard-trial-new-evidence-revealed/
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