Law&Crime Sidebar - Ben Chew

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

Jesse Weber recaps his interview with Johnny Depp's attorney Ben Chew. Chew talks about sitting next to Depp each day of the trial. Also, Chew gets emotional while discussing the verdict. Chew also has some strong responses to what Amber Heard's team has been saying post-verdict.READ FULL TRIAL RECAPS:lawandcrime.comLISTEN TO REAL CRIME PROFILE:APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-crime-profile/id1081244497SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/6VQLInwf3aOExBj3xExo85SUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. I've watched this trial from day one, whether I was in the courtroom or watching on Law and Crime, I was watching you and Johnny sitting together the entire trial. Okay, watching your interaction between them was just, I wanted to be a fly on the wall to know. I know you can't reveal attorney client privilege, of course. Can you give us any insight into what it was like sitting next to Johnny, your client, throughout this trial, listening to the witnesses together, what that was like?

It was so much fun. Johnny is so smart. He's so insightful and he's so funny. So there are many times when I'm trying to listen carefully to the witnesses as he was, and he would make such a funny comment that we would have to laugh. And in a way, it had a great impact on me and the rest of the team because if this guy whose life is on his line, on the line, he took it very seriously,

but if he can find humor in what has been a tragedy for him, I mean, we can get our act together and we can keep pushing. So it actually was really great for morale. and he you know we all really believed in him he's a great guy to work with and we really wanted to help him win welcome to sidebar presented by law and crime this is where we break down the biggest moments in the day's biggest cases i'm jesse weber so yes i had the incredible opportunity to sit down with ben chew now for those of you who are slightly unfamiliar with mr chew because a lot of the attention was put on camille vaskes dep's attorney who questioned

Amber heard. Chew is the guy who sat next to Depp every day. Whenever you saw a clip of the courtroom and you saw Johnny Depp, the guy sitting next to him, that was Ben Chew. That's one of his main attorneys. And, you know, they were whispering. They were sometimes joking around. You mean, you heard it himself. In fact, there was a viral video of Depp kind of drawing this doodle and passing it to Ben Chew to observe. If you look online, I'm sure you can fight it. But on a more substantive level, Chu was not only sitting with Depp. He questioned key witnesses, he argued important motions, and he delivered parts of the opening statement and closing argument. So he was an integral part of Johnny Depp's team. And what's

interesting about him, and the same thing could be said for Camille Vasquez, is that during the course of the trial, they became celebrities. They became rock stars. I mean, if you look online and you just use the hashtag Ben Shue, just see what you get. See how many people have posted about Ben Shoe. when i covered this trial in fairfax county virginia i remember there was a point this was actually during the deliberations we were waiting for a verdict ben shu walks outside of the courthouse to just put something in the car that was waiting for him and tons of johnny dep's supporters just start cheering him they start screaming for him again this was a trial that morphed into something else it turned into something else entirely. It became a very important cultural and pop culture movement as much as it was an

important legal case. And Ben Shue and Camille Vasquez became rock stars. They really did. And when this case started, Ben Shue, Ben Rottenborn, Elaine Bredehoff, Camel Vasquez, these weren't easily recognizable names. I was in Fairfax for week two of this case. Before all, the fanfare, these attorneys were normal people. Nobody really knew. knew about them. They weren't easily recognizable names. Now, Chu, in my opinion, after really sitting down with him and getting to meet him, just an incredibly genuine person, such a down-to-earth guy. And it was funny because he said to me, he's a 65-year-old lawyer. And for him, it was embarrassing and humbling to receive all this attention. And it just showed the support that

Johnny Depp had outside of the courtroom. But when Chu sat down with us, I had to ask him. First, one of the first things I had to ask him was his reaction to what's been happening after the verdict. Because as you may know, so the jury came back and they found Amber Hurd liable to Johnny Depp on each one of his claims of defamation for the words that she wrote in the Washington Postopet piece and she only won on one of her counterclaims.

So she really lost this case. Now, Hurd's attorney, Elaine Brettahoff, spoke out on different shows and she said that she felt the jury must have been affected by media exposure. that evidence was improperly excluded from the trial. Again, she's prepping her appeal here. She's prepping the appeal for Amber Hurd.

But more significantly, she's putting all the blame on everything else. And on top of that, a representative from Amber Hurd's camp criticized Ben Shue for doing interviews like the one he did on our network. So I asked Ben Shue what he thought about all this. And here's what he had to say. I'm sure you've seen Elaine Bratterhoff's comments after the verdict saying that the jury was tainted by the publicity, that there was suppressed evidence. What's your reaction to that?

I was really disappointed to hear that because she's a very good lawyer, very experienced, and it seemed to cast dispersions on the juror's integrity, because as you know, they took up an oath not to watch social media, and there's no reason to believe that they didn't. So to hear such a baseless claim was disappointing. And what about the idea of suppressed evidence? That was absurd. I mean, as you know, there are rules of evidence,

and both sides had evidence that was excluded for proper evidentiary reasons. Before you came on to do some interviews today, Amber Heard's representative came forward and said this was unprofessional, it's a victory lap. I want to give you opportunity to respond to that. Yeah, again, I mean, this is kind of a case of a pot calling a kettle black because Ms. Breedhoff went on some of the morning shows the day after the verdict to put her spin on it. So if she has a problem with that, then she should look in the mirror.

No love loss there. I think that's pretty clear. Now, he also admitted something that was very, very interesting. You know, we dedicated a sidebar to the question of, well, how is Amber Hurd going to pay the $10.35 million dollars damages award the judgment to Johnny Depp? One of the questions I posed in that episode, and it's a question I keep posing, and I even asked Chew about it. Is it possible that Depp will waive the judgment and not enforce it? Curiously, Chew admitted to me that for Depp, it's not about the money. It was about getting his life back. It was about getting his reputation back. So while he wouldn't outright say it, and you know, he couldn't outright say if Depp wouldn't actually try to get her to pay the

money back, it does make you wonder. Could Depp say, hey, Amber, you know what, not going to collect the money, just don't appeal. it don't fight this don't talk about anymore and i won't force you to pay up after choose answer it kind of seems like a possibility to me now i couldn't talk to ben shoo without talking about debt taking the stand i mean this was a moment okay you talk about this case when debt testified right after that right during that that is when you saw all these people come to fairfax virginia you saw people started waiting online at one a m to get tickets it's when the social media interest in this case absolutely grew.

It all started with Johnny Depp taking the stand. And for a plaintiff in his position, testifying to the world that he's not an abuser that heard publicly lied about him in a national publication, him taking the stand is a very big deal. So I asked you about this. What was going on behind the scenes? And were you or anybody on the legal team concerned? We were nervous in the sense that he writes all of his, I mean, he writes his script. when he is performing roles and this is no different I mean we had suggestions as any

attorneys would but ultimately what he says is all in his own words so we knew or we strongly believe that he was going to be consistent with everything and truthful and so in that sense we weren't that worried about him and he didn't have to be reminded about dates and events. I mean, his memory is quite clear about what happened and what did not happen. I thought he was terrific. And what about under cross-examination

by Benjamin Rottenborn? You know, it got tense at times. What were your thoughts on how the cross? Well, our main concern, as with any witness, is that he not loses cool. Because we knew that they would come at him with a male, and in this case, Ben Rottenborn. So when we practiced, we had one of our senior attorneys,

Wayne Denison, come in and play the role of a tack dog. And so I think Johnny was prepared for that. And I think he kept his composure under cross. I think he did a very good job. I thought that was fascinating. And it makes you think, was Depp more prepared and scripted than he seemed? All right, I want to tell you about a podcast right now that I think all of you are really going to enjoy.

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Wondry app. Check it out. Now, Ben Chu also provided some more insights into this trial. He said that it was the goal of the team during opening statements at the start of this case, which he said was pretty tense. It was a tense atmosphere. It was to make sure they made promises that they could keep to the jury. He said that Amber Heard didn't take accountability when she was on the stand, that she didn't really own up to a lot of things, that she provided two convenient answers for maybe the jury to accept.

And in fact, he said it was a strategic decision to have Camille Vasquez do the cross-examination of Amber Heard. And he thought she did an absolutely incredible job. But I had the opportunity to ask you. about the verdict. And first, I will tell you, it was funny because he said that he and the team played monopoly as the jury was deliberating, which I thought was interesting. We always want to know what are the attorneys doing as we're waiting for a verdict in the hours and days to come. Well, apparently they're playing monopoly. And I would have never really guessed that. He kind of jokingly told me that his colleagues wouldn't sell him property, which I think he took

a little bit of issue with. But for anyone who followed the live reading of the verdict, and I hope you were watching on law and crime, you might remember that the jury comes back with a verdict, but they didn't fill out the damages award page. They didn't fill out that part of the verdict form. It was awkward because, as Chu said, and we all thought, so clearly the jury found someone liable for defamation. We just didn't know who.

And he said that this was a torturous few minutes, as that we all waited for the jury to fill out the form and come back ultimately with their verdict. But I did ask him, ultimately about the moment of the verdict. And you know what? Him describing it was a moment in and of itself because as he explains, he got a bit choked up.

Take a listen. You hear the verdict, a win on each one of Johnny Depp's claims. What was your reaction? It was emotional. I mean, it was, we were so thrilled for him. That was great. And it was a great moment. And did you feel, I know,

I know you can't say what you spoke to Johnny about, but if you can give any kind of insight into what that initial conversation was, the verdict comes out, how happy he must have been. He was euphoric, and he looked, I mean, he always looks great, but to me, he looked 10 years younger. I mean, he looked like the weight of the world just off of his shoulders. And one of his longtime friends said, and it was really moving to us, is that he hadn't seen and Johnny smiled like that in six years. So that made us very pleased and very gratified. Wow.

And the counterclaim that Amber heard side won, what was your reaction to that? It was consistent in the sense that it suggested to us that the jury really took a lot of time considering all the evidence. And obviously we're not privy to the deliberations, but they found no liability on the two statements by Mr. Waldman that said her abuse allegations were a hoax.

But they found liability on a more convoluted statement, which implicated a number of her friends and their activities on the night in question, which is May 21, 2016, when the police came. Police found no marks on her face. Mr. Waldman was making suggestions about what other people were doing, and there was less proof in the record about that from the testimony of those friends. So in that sense, it wasn't a total surprise. And in the context of the entire verdict, we think it was overwhelmingly in

favor of Mr. Depp. Wow. Wow. You know, there's something to be said here. You put aside the law you put aside the celebrity you put aside all the details the drama everything this was something different because and this is really something that could be said for amber herds attorneys as well these are lawyers across the board who really care about their clients these are lawyers who invested the time the emotion their lives into this case and when the verdict is read they felt it i think ben shu made that really clear how much this verdict meant to him it was a really really raw human emotion from him there. And, you know, I asked you a few more questions in the limited time that I had with him, and it was very generous with this time, and it included

something that I really wanted to know. You might remember that when Amber Hurd testified that Depp attacked her sister on the stairs, and, you know, she jumped in to protect her sister, Whitney, and it ended up with Amber hitting Johnny Depp. Well, at one point, Amber heard says, I immediately thought of the Kate Moss incident. Obviously, a reference to the rumor that Depp had thrown Kate Moss down a flight of stairs. Well, if you were watching Law and Crime, you might have seen Ben Shue, again, sitting right next to Johnny Depp, kind of does like a fist pump in the air. And he seemed really excited. And you know what?

I asked you about this. And he said he kind of lost his composure in this moment because he knew, he said he knew that she wasn't telling the truth, that this was not what happened. In fact, Kate Moss was called to the stand. This was what led Johnny Depp to calling Kate Moss to the stand, and she testified via a live video link and said that Johnny Depp never threw her down the stairs in any which way. But again, he's kind of giving an insight into what he felt in that moment, lost his composure, couldn't handle it. And it was one of the more notable moments of Ben Shue in this case. So I do want to thank Benjamin Shue for taking time to speak with us here on law and crime.

You can watch more of those clips on our Twitter page and our. our YouTube page. We're hopefully going to do something a little bit more with that interview. And we appreciate his time. And hopefully we'll have an opportunity to interview maybe Camille Vasquez and maybe someone from Amber Heard's side as well. The offer has always stood and we have reached out to them. But thanks for listening to us here at Sidebar.

You can listen to us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.