Why should I care about this celebrity lawsuit? Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard

We're perhaps reaching the end of the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard defamation lawsuit. In case you're somehow unaware of the situation (and in that case, good for you, seriously), Johnny Depp is suing his ex-wife Amber Heard for defamation because of an Op-Ed she wrote for the Washington Post in 2018 about how she was a survivor of Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse at the hands of her rich and powerful ex-husband, which the general public understands to refer to Johnny Depp. She is counter-suing him as well.

Johnny Depp is suing for 50 million dollars, and his team has to prove several things in order to win this case: 1. That he never abused Amber Heard, 2. That he suffered 50 million dollars in damages as a result of the op-ed, and 3. That the op-ed was undeniably about him. I think that he's got points 2 and 3 in the bag, but point 1 is harder to prove. That being said, it seems that the general public is pretty much totally on his side. In fact, the general public not only seems to believe that Johnny Depp never hurt Amber Heard, but that she was in fact the abuser in the relationship.

In all honesty, I went into this case with a bias against Amber Heard. I had listened to some pretty damning audio recordings that had come out previously which seemed to imply that she often instigated violence in their marriage and that Johnny often tried to flee from it. One audio recording in particular seems to feature Amber Heard mocking Johnny as she more or less tells him that no one would believe him if he tried to tell the world that he was a victim of domestic violence on the basis of him being a man. What I and many others were hoping to see in this lawsuit was some justice for Johnny Depp, to prove that women really can't accuse men of anything they want, true or not, and get away with it. We want women to be credible when they say they've been abused under all circumstances so that we don't feel inclined to badger them for excruciating and triggering details, but at the same time, we don't want men to have no recourse if they are falsely accused.

In the first 16 days of trial, which I haven't watched in their entirety, to be clear, Johnny Depp's legal team did an excellent job of demonstrating the inconsistencies in Amber Heard's testimony. We saw police body cam footage which undermined her recounting of an occasion of alleged abuse. We saw pictures of her in the days following alleged instances of violence against her without any visible injury. We heard that she never sought medical treatment for her injuries, despite the fact that she claimed that Johnny broke her nose on multiple occasions. Furthermore, we heard testimony from Johnny's friends, employees, colleagues, and acquaintances who all confirmed that they neither witnessed any violence on Johnny's part, nor any injuries to Amber Heard. We did, however, hear about a severe injury that Johnny sustained during one of their fights, in which the tip of his finger was severed. In all of this, Amber Heard's legal team could do very little to rehabilitate her image or corroborate her claims.

I wanted to have an open mind, but as the trial continued, Johnny's story was becoming more and more credible while Amber's fell apart at the seams. Things changed, however, when Amber Heard got off the stand and she finally had some witnesses on her side of the narrative testify. Most were done via video deposition and most just sounded like they were either parroting what Amber said or in some other way contradicting it. The testimony which intrigued me most was that of her make-up artist. Time and time again, Amber had claimed that the reason the photos taken of her in the days after Johnny's abuse didn't show any injuries was that the injuries were concealed with makeup. This wasn't that compelling, because while makeup can cover bruises, it cannot cover swelling. And if her nose was broken, for instance, it would probably be swollen. But her makeup artist testified to injuries that she saw on Amber Heard the day after one of Johnny Depp's alleged beatings and what she did to cover them up. Amber then appeared on the James Corden show. After listening to the makeup artist, I watched the James Corden interview in question. I saw exactly what the makeup artist described: peach-toned darkness under Amber's eyes, which would be accomplished using a concealer to counteract the blue-ish tint of a bruise, and a slightly swollen red lip. So, was it as bad as Amber described? No. But were there injuries to her face? Yes. To me, this single testimony was enough for me to consider that, even if Amber is a massive, delusional, pathological liar, it doesn't mean that there isn't some kernel of truth to her claims.

Johnny's public image right now is pretty positive in spite of his career's recent decline. I think a lot of it may have to do with a sort of grassroots rehabilitation campaign. In the last few years since the op-ed which was unflattering to Johnny Depp and the release of the audio recordings which were very unflattering to Amber Heard, I have seen people coming out of the woodwork to say that Johnny Depp is, basically, an angel. They say that none of his previous partners ever claimed that he was abusive, they say that he's a nice guy with a great reputation. But those things aren't necessarily true. Based on what I know, he has a history of throwing wine bottles and trashing hotels, of being late to work and fighting at night clubs, of arguing with the police and doing drugs. Do these things make you a wife-beater? No, they don't, but they do show a dark side with violent tendencies.

Furthermore, Johnny Depp already tried to sue over his public image. He sued The Sun, a UK publication, for publishing an article calling him a wife-beater. Libel cases are easier to win in the UK, but still, he lost. The court determined that the claims made in that article were likely to be true, that of the 14 instances of domestic abuse that Amber Heard accused him of, 12 were credible. I'm not sure what the difference is between the evidence presented in that lawsuit and the current ongoing case, but we've already seen a group of jurors convinced that Johnny Depp hurt Amber Heard.

All this to say, I'm tired of the black-and-white reactions I've seen to this case. Amber Heard is almost certainly lying, but that doesn't mean that Johnny is automatically telling the truth. It seems like those online commenters refuse to admit when Amber or any of her witnesses are telling a believable story, or when her lawyers present a piece of compelling evidence. When they do, they cite body language or photoshop as the reason that those things can't really be true. They'll oscillate between calling Amber a good actress or a bad actress, depending on what suits the narrative that they've chosen to believe regarding Johnny's innocence. At this point, it seems that people are electing to ignore evidence, unable to accept that Johnny Depp may actually be, in some way, guilty of the things she's accused him of.

Apparently, online commenters aren't the only ones who have bought Johnny's version of events hook, line, and sinker. According to those who have been able to join the gallery and watch the proceedings in person, the jury is mostly checked out at this point, especially when Amber or one of her witnesses is testifying. The excellent work of Johnny's legal team seems to have convinced them that anything that Amber Heard has to say is not worth the time of day, which is unfortunate if truth and justice are the goal in all of this.