Law&Crime Sidebar - Depp v. Heard: Biggest moments of Amber Heard's Testimony

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

Jesse Weber recaps some of the biggest moments from Amber Heard's testimony so far. From the time she alleges Johnny Depp first hit her to when she says she thought she was about to die. Heard details for the jury the chilling and disturbing sexual assault allegations. The actress claims she wasn't the abuser when she hit the Pirates of the Caribbean star, but was acting in self-defense.See 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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that 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. Could you tell the jury what this is and what it depicts? This is my face with a busted lip, which it's difficult to see in this picture, but my two black eyes. One is worse than the other. Like I said, maybe a day or two later. And my broken nose. That's actress Amber Hur, describing to.

a jury, the supposed injury, she said she sustained at the hands of actor Johnny Depp. Hey, everybody, welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime, where we recap the biggest moments in the day's biggest trials. I'm Jesse Weber. So we're talking the ongoing trial of Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard out in Fairfax County, Virginia. Depp is suing his ex-wife for $50 million, claiming defamation, namely that she falsely accused him of domestic violence in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed piece, and that that. that article ruined his life and career. Now, she's actually countersuing him for a hundred million dollars saying he defamed her when he publicly called her a liar and that she created a hoax

about him being an abuser. Now, there's no court this week. It's actually been a pre-scheduled week where court is dark. They're going to be back Monday, May 16th with Amber Heard back on the stand. And we thought it would be a good opportunity to go over some of the more notable moments from her testimony so far. Let's start with when she says Depp first hit her. Now, up until this point, she had testified about her upbringing, going to Hollywood, how she fell in love with Depp, and then how the issues started forming in the relationship. So she says one time, she commented on Depp's tattoo, which said, Why No Forever? For any Depp officionados out there, Depp's tattoo originally said Winona forever in reference to his ex Winona Ryder, but then when they

broke up, he changed it. Heard said she began to ask him about his tattoo and kind of laughed when he was explaining it and she says that's when he slapped her twice in the face i just sat there thinking how much time do i have to i figure out what i need to do because god did he just hit me no i didn't want to leave him i didn't want this to be the reality i didn't want to have the man i was in love with i know you don't come back from that you know not dumb i i know you can't hit a woman i you You can't hit a man. You can't hit anyone. You can't just hit somebody because they...

I knew there was no... I knew it was wrong, and I knew that I had to leave him. And that's what broke my heart, because I didn't want to leave him. I thought if I got up out of that room, and I'd leave the best thing that ever happened to me. And I wish I could sit here and say, I stood up, and I walked out of that house, and I drew a line, and I stood.

up for myself. I was just looking at the dirty carpet trying to will myself to get up, to walk out of the door because I knew I needed to. And I really slowly, I stood up and I remember looking at him in the eye and just looking at him, frankly, because I didn't know what else to do. and before I know it he starts crying and you know like I I've never seen

an adult man cry I didn't even really see my dad cry in my grandma's funeral you know it just it's weird and he's crying tears I mean just falling out of his eyes he gets down on his knees and he grabs my hands and he's touching my hands and he's saying to me I'll never

do that again. I'm so sorry, baby. I put the f***er away. I thought I killed it and it's done. I thought I put the monster away and I've done it before. It's done. But on his knees. Okay, I was in the courtroom for when she described this. I was looking around and I will tell you there are a lot of Johnny Depp supporters in there. And from what I saw, they were whispering, making these kind of side comments, and it seemed to me that they didn't believe her. In fact, when I went to go to the bathroom, I overheard a group of court patrons outside say it looked like she was rehearsed. Now, apparently they weren't alone. There have been a number of commentators and online accounts saying that this all seemed scripted, not natural, that she was incredible,

that she was providing too much detail in her testimony of these accounts. And some said it sounded like a monologue. Three ways to look at this. number one she could be making it up number two maybe that's just the way she speaks or number three maybe it was scripted and rehearsed but it's true sometimes we see witnesses who testify and want to be prepared so it can seem a bit unnatural but it doesn't change the substance of what they're saying the allegations and descriptions from heard though would get more and more detailed i remember thinking you have you have your hands

hands free. You know, like, I had time to think. You have your hands free. You could have hit me with your hands. Why did you headbut me? I was trying to hit him off me. I was trying to get him to get, he was trying to get his body off of me, and he was just pummeling me. I don't know how else to describe what I was. I went down to the floor. I remember being on top of me, and he's screaming and swinging at me while I was on the floor. He had me by the hair and dragged me the rest of the way from the office into the neighboring room, the neighboring apartment.

I remember the door that connected these two rooms had a metal great, not great, but a metal bottom metal floor that separated it. It's a big, heavy bank door. And I remember he was dragging me and I removed my hands from my head and kind of tried to grab onto the metal door to prevent him from dragging me into the room.

But he, I couldn't stop him. He dragged me all the way from that copy. I was trying to, I was trying to get free of his grasp. I was trying to stop him from pulling me. I remember feeling the carpet and the metal. And he wrestles me, drags me up to the bed, throws me down onto the bed.

It kind of wrestles me down onto the bed. And he kneels on my back with one leg. And I was trying to fight him off me because I was face down on the bed top. And he wrestled me down, kind of trying to hold me down with his knee on my back. And he's punching me, punching me, with a close fist punching me repeatedly. And I don't remember even feeling the pain. I just remember the sound of Johnny's voice He got next to my ear

And he was screaming over and over and over again Each time it sounded louder and more desperate I f***-hate you I fucking hate you I f*** hate you Over and over I hate you And then

pounding the back of my head He just hit me over and over and over again and I got really still and it felt in my body like quiet and I thought this is how I die he's going to kill me now and I'm not you're going to kill me and he won't even have realized it. Now remember, if the jury believes just one instance of abuse could be physical, but it could also be mental, psychological, verbal, Depp would lose his case. The jury believes one instance of abuse, then Amber Heard didn't lie in the Washington Post article. She didn't commit defamation. And this would also help her counterclaim that Johnny Depp deliberately lied

about her being a liar. And what makes this especially hard for Johnny Depp is that the jury was shown photos of Hurd's seemingly bruised face. And we know that Depp's team will try to show that she manufactured these marks, that it's possible she faked her injuries, that maybe these bruises were caused by something else like a medical procedure. So we have more questions. We don't have all the answers. And clearly, the cross-examination of Amber Heard will definitely be something to watch. Stay with us here at Sidebar after these words from our friends at the court junkie podcast. Imagine spending 16 years in prison for a crime you didn't commit. Or imagine being on the jury at a trial where you have to decide whether a father murdered a family or whether

it was a cartel hit. This is Jillian from Court Junkie, a podcast that examines criminal cases and trials. Each week, I give you the facts of a new case and let you decide if you agree with the outcome. Make sure to subscribe to Court Junkie on Apple, Spotify, or any of your favorite podcast apps. Now we also have to talk about some of the worst allegations from Amber Hurd. And that is when Amber Hurd claims that she was also sexually assaulted by Johnny Depp. In one instance, Hurd describes Depp performing a cavity search. And in the other, she explains how she was violated with a bottle. We realize that this can be incredibly difficult to listen to. So we want to warn you, listener discretion is advised. He's like grabbing my, my, my, my,

my breasts, he's touching my thighs, um, he rips my underwear off. Um, and then he, he, he proceeds to do a cavity search. Cocaine is Coke. I was wondering how I, somebody who didn't do cocaine and was against it, that was in and of itself causing problems in our relationship. How could I hide? Why would I hide his drugs from, like he was insinuating that I was doing it or something? It made no sense. And he was telling me, we're doing, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're

conduct a cavity search, shall we? Like, just shoved his fingers inside me. I just stood there staring at the stupid light. You know what to do. I just stood it. I just stood there. While he did that, he twisted his fingers around. I don't...

I convinced myself it wasn't broken and that the bottle wasn't broken or else it would be a lot worse and the discomfort I was feeling afterwards just paled in comparison to how scared. Shocked I was. I'm scared. I just married this man. I just married him.

And forgive me for asking this, but I need to just make sure the record's clear. You were penetrated up the vagina into the pubic bone. Is that correct? Objection, Your Honor, leading. Sustained. What if any penetration was there in your vagina? The bottle. I'm so sorry.

I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Johnny had the bottle inside of me. It's hard to imagine someone making all of this up, but that's why it's it. Adep is arguing that herd fabricated all of these accounts. And also the sexual assault allegations are incredibly important because one of the alleged defamatory statements in the Washington Post article says it's the headline, I spoke up against sexual violence and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change. So if she wasn't telling the truth about the sexual assault allegations,

that could be a big problem for her. Little side note, it's possible that headline might be tossed out because it might come out during the course of the trial that Amber Hurd didn't write that headline and maybe she didn't even endorse it. Now one of the other things that Amber Hurd has been doing in her testimony is reframing the narrative. Up until her case began, it was just weeks of testimony, including from Depp himself, accusing Herd of being the abuser in the relationship and Depp the victim. Depp says that he was physically attacked by Hurd. There were photos of injuries to his face that were shown to the jury. There was an audio recording of Hurd acknowledging that she hit death.

There were multiple witnesses who testified that Hurd would verbally abuse the Pirates of the Caribbean Star. But this is interesting because Hurd explained that she was doing all this because she was acting in self-defense. These fights

would try to stand up for myself by December 2014. I was pushing back. I'd push him off of me. I tried to hit his hands away. I tried to always get back up, which sometimes not, sometimes almost always made it worse.

We seem to provoke him. But I tried. And worse, I, you know, I would yell at him, I'd scream at him. I'd call him ugly names. So ashamed of the names we'd call each other. It was awful. It was awful. We, both, got into that pattern.

It was so, you know, I felt so angry that this was happening to me. And it felt, it just felt so. So unfair, you know, it felt like nothing I could do, felt like nothing I could do would change the sobriety patterns, felt like nothing I could do would stand up for him. And nothing I did made him stop hitting me. In fact, in one account where she's accused of attacking Depp, she says she was just trying to protect her sister Whitney. In all of my relationship to date with Johnny, I hadn't landed a blow.

and I, for the first time, hit him, like actually hit him, square in the face. He didn't push my sister down the stairs. And all of my time, all my time of being in that relationship to that point, hadn't even landed one on Johnny. Sure, I had tried to fight back, threw my arms, flailed my arms, hit whenever I could to try to block blows myself, but never landed anything. And Johnny kind of looked stunned and then laughed at me, and then lunged at me again, and before I know it, security stepped in between us and pulled Johnny away. And I went upstairs with my sister and we locked the door and I could just hear all this commotion happening in Penhouse 5. I could hear him raging, destroying my things. I could hear it.

And at some point I saw it the next day. And this is all just a glimpse of what we've seen so far from Amber Heard on the stand. Who knows what's going to happen next when she faces tough questioning from Johnny Depp's lawyers? Thanks for joining us here at Sidebar. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time.