Lawyer Elaine Bredehoft said Heard had been 'demonised' by Depp's legal team. Photo / AP
Lawyer Elaine Bredehoft said Heard had been 'demonised' by Depp's legal team. Photo / AP
Amber Heard's lawyer has accused the jury in her defamation trial of being influenced by social media, as she says the actress cannot afford to pay Johnny Depp US$15 million.
In a series of critical interviews on American television, Elaine Bredehoft said the verdict sent a "horrible message" and that Heard had been "demonised" by Depp's legal team.
The verdict handed down on Wednesday found that Depp had been defamed by three statements in a 2018 op-ed written by Heard in which she said she was an abuse victim.
Though the article did not name Depp, a jury in Fairfax, Virginia found that the comments were clearly about him and that they were false, defamatory and written with "actual malice".
The jury awarded him US$15m ($22.9m) in compensatory damages and US$7m in punitive damages, but the judge reduced the punitive damages award to US$535,000 under a state cap.
"How can you [escape it]?" she asked. "They went home every night. They have families. The families are on social media. We had a 10-day break in the middle because of the judicial conference. There's no way they couldn't have been influenced by it.
"It's like the Roman colosseum, you know? How they viewed this whole case. I was against cameras in the courtroom and I went on record with that and argued against it because of the sensitive nature of this. But it made it a zoo."
Separately, she told CBS: "I have to believe that the jury, even though they're told not to go and look at anything, you know, they have weekends, they have families, they have social media."
On TikTok, the hashtag #justiceforjohnnydepp had around 19 billion views. On Twitter, some pro-Depp posts received more likes than Heard's entire 300,000 following.
The jury was instructed not to read about the case online, but they were not sequestered and they were allowed to keep their phones.
While the case was ostensibly about libel, most of the testimony focused on whether Heard had been physically and sexually abused, as she claimed.
Heard enumerated more than a dozen alleged assaults, including a fight in Australia - where Depp was shooting a Pirates of the Caribbean sequel - in which Depp lost the tip of his middle finger and Heard said she was sexually assaulted with a liquor bottle.
Brefehoft pointed to a defamation lawsuit Depp lost against The Sun, who had called him a "wife beater". A High Court Judge in London found he had repeatedly assaulted her.
"We weren't allowed to tell the jury this," Bredehoft said on NBC.
"So what did Depp's team learn from this? Demonise Amber. And suppress the evidence."
After the verdict, Heard said: "The disappointment I feel today is beyond words. I'm heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband.
Actor Amber Heard hugs her attorney Elaine Bredehoft after the verdict was read at the Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse. Photo / AP
"I'm even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women.
"It is a setback. It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated.
"It sets back the idea that violence against women is to be taken seriously.
"I believe Johnny's attorneys succeeded in getting the jury to overlook the key issue of freedom of speech and ignore evidence that was so conclusive that we won in the UK.
"I'm sad I lost this case. But I am sadder still that I seem to have lost a right I thought I had as an American - to speak freely and openly."
