Law&Crime Sidebar - Depp v. Heard Day 17 Recap

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

Jesse Weber breaks down Day 17 in the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard defamation trial. Amber Heard back on the stand and faces tough questioning from Depp's lawyer. The audio tape of Heard laughing at and insulting Depp. Heard's friend testifies he may have been a witness to a violent encounter between the couple.  CHECK OUT TRUE CRIME GARAGE PODCAST:Looking for some more True Crime? Well if you haven’t already, check out one of the best there is - that’s the True Crime Garage podcast. True Crime Garage is your next binge listen. Each week the Garage guys cover a new case featuring missing persons cases, cold cases, solved stories and serial killer profiles. Search and listen to True Crime Garage on Apple, Spotify, and all of the best podcast listening apps. For more info go to www.truecrimegarage.com.APPLE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/true-crime-garage/id1062418176SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/1mVErk3lUWvAgRAXHJ67FGPLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Get Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/LAW83 - enter promo code LAW83 for 83% off and 3 extra months for free!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. views shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller 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. When Ms. Vasquez asked you if you knew why Mr. Depp couldn't or wouldn't look you in the eye here or in the UK, you said, yes, you know. Why? Please tell the jury why. Because he's guilty. Because he knows he's lying. Otherwise, why can't he look at me?

I survived. I survived that man and I'm here and I'm able to look at him. Amber heard back on the stand and directly calling out actor Johnny Depp for allegedly violently abusing her during the course of their relationship. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime, where we recap the biggest moments in the day's biggest trials. I'm Jesse Weber. All right, before we get started, are you looking for a little bit more of true crime content? Well, if you haven't already, I want you to check out one of the best that there is, and that is the

True Crime Garage podcast. True Crime Garage podcast is your next binge listen. The True Crime Garage guys, what they do is they cover a new case featuring missing persons, cold cases, solve stories, and of course, serial killer profiles. and listen to the true crime podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all of the best podcast listening apps. For more information, go to truecrime garage.com. This podcast is sponsored by Surfshark VPN. The last thing you want to think about when you're going online,

you're searching, you're shopping for things, is that you're being watched and surveilled and your information being mined by companies and people. It's so problematic and creepy. Well, Surfshark VPN can solve all of these problems for you in a really easy-to-use solution. They basically turn you into an online ghost, an anonymous user that makes it incredibly tough for companies and people to track you. Just with the click of one button, you can forget about data mining of your information, you can forget about intrusive advertisements, which I know everybody hates.

And right now, if you use the promo code Law 83, capital L-A-W-83, you get 83% off plus three extra months for free. Now you might be saying, sounds like a great deal, but I still have no idea. what Jesse's talking about. I don't even know what a VPN is. That's okay because Surf Shark VPN is offering a 30-day money-back guarantee, so there's really no risk for you. You can surf with your own set of rules. The link is in the description. So we're talking the ongoing trial of Johnny Depp v. Amber Hurd out in Fairfax County, Virginia, which just wrapped up day 17. 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 article ruined his life and his career.

Now, Hurd is actually countersuing Depp for $100 million saying that he orchestrated a public smear campaign against her by trying to discredit her allegations in the media and calling them a hoax. And where we left off, Amber Hurd was back in the witness box and the day started with the continued cross-examination by Depp's attorney Camille Vasquez. And this was a very tense Very tight cross-examination. Vasquez wouldn't allow Herd even an inch to evade her questions. And one of the first accounts that Vasquez focused on was the alleged sexual abuse that Amber Hurd says she suffered at the hands of Johnny Depp. This is one of the worst accounts that she relayed to the jury. But what you're going to hear is Depp's attorney really trying to point out that things don't make sense in this story.

Listen to this, and I warn you, the content is quite graphic and quite disturbing. Your testimony is, Ms. Heard, that either he has the bottle before or after, he's holding you by the neck on the counter. Is that your testimony? He held me by the neck on the counter. Where's the bottle? At what point? While holding you down by your neck. When he was assaulting me with the bottle, it was in his hand.

Was it in his hand before or after he holds you down by your neck? I was being held down while he assaulted. me with the bottle. When he puts you on the counter, does he have the bottle in his hand? Yes or no? As I have always said, I don't remember exactly what happened first, or I don't remember the sequence. I just remember being aware that I was being assaulted by a bottle while I was on the countertop. So he penetrates you with this bottle.

But you don't know how he got the bottle, right? That is correct. And he did that right after he lost the tip of his right middle finger. Again, I don't remember the exact sequence. of those events. We'll get to the sequence. And while he was on 8 to 10 MDMA pills, right? Yes.

So not only that, Camille Vasquez would press Hurd on these lack of visible injuries and photographs after these encounters. Why Hurd wouldn't always photograph these injuries? Why she didn't seek medical attention? She questioned whether she used Photoshop to make the bruises and pictures look worse and even insinuated that heard staged scenes after alleged fights to make it look like Depp went crazy. of this bad stuff alleged against Amber Hurd.

But what Vasquez also attempted to do was to show that Hurd wasn't the innocent victim, but instead a mean and unstable partner to Johnny Depp. And she did that by playing a series of audio recordings between the couple. I don't want you to know. I'm not my dick. I've. Hey. I might have.

So if my dick, he used. I wish I had fucking had me. I wish I fucking hadn't. I wish I had fucking hadn't bought into any of your fucking lies, your bullshit, your sober fucking presents, your fucking goodness, your sweetness, all the lies. I wish I hadn't bought into the months of you being you. I wish I hadn't bought you.

I wish I hadn't thought I could have kids with you. You are a fucking kid yourself. I wish I hadn't bought into any of the lies you sold. Talk about fake bill and goods. Good. You're the biggest, fucking producer. You're the biggest fucking seller of fake, fucking bill of goods. Talk about presenting yourself with something you're not.

Suck my dick. Suck my dick. I fucking, you, you've left nothing and I've left everything. So suck your dick. Yeah, go on. Which is probably your next move. Suck. No, I don't want to suck your dick.

I don't want nothing to do with your fucking midsection. Well, go get it, man. Go get it, man. Because I don't need something. Go on. Fuck. Fuck yourself. No shit I don't.

I don't. I don't want to. I don't want to. It's going to be all through that. No. It's not really true, remember. Actually, it kind of is. It kind of is?

What kind of is? What does somebody do you know? No. No. No. Hmm. Uh-huh. Oh, is it? What is it?

No, I'm sure Rochelle's available. I'll call her up. I'm sure she's a bad. I'm sure she is. I'll see. I'll see you know. Oh, I'm sure she is for her yoga blog. That fake laugh is too much to say.

So yeah, that is not great. Right. And the question is, does that seem like someone who is afraid of Johnny Depp? Or does that seem like someone who's the bully and the aggressor? More of the recordings would be heard berating Depp, claiming he's a sellout, he's a joke in the industry. You know, again, showing that he's the victim in this relationship, not the aggressor. And heard on the standing knowledge that she said terrible things to Johnny Depp,

but said it grew out of frustration that she had with the actor over his drug abuse and everything that he was doing. And in fact, Hurd was also confronted with audio recordings of her, begging for Depp not to leave her. And then there were these text messages, again, begging for him to come back to her and her apologizing. You start off again by trying to get Mr. Depp's attention, right? You write, please come home. I was trying to stop another bender. You write, please come home, right? That is correct. Please answer. Don't break us up. Please answer. Please. And continuing on page 97, you write, give me some piece of your

heart please no fight I promise please no fights please just pick up please give me two minutes I'm dying please and continuing on page 98 you write please come home please come home Baba I'm so sorry actually you didn't say Baba you You said baby. Apologies. And it goes on. Did I read those correctly? That is correct.

That was another time I'm trying to stop another twist off. This is what would happen when Mr. Depp would try to take some space from you, right? No, this is what would happen when Johnny had moved into the next phase of the cycle, decided to use, and our lives were getting a lot worse at that time. Ms. Heard, I'm talking about your actions. This is what you would do to Mr. Depp when he would leave you. You would harangue him. Is that correct?

You would harangue him. Your Honor, at least let her answer the question. Those are interrupting you. That's fine. Go ahead and answer the question. I do not think I would characterize my behavior that way. I was trying to stop him from using. You were texting him incessantly.

Isn't that correct, Ms. Heard? It was imperative for my life. Ms. Heard, my question is much more simple. You were texting him incessively. I would try everything to get a hold of him and to stop the cycle. That's a yes, right? I would try everything to stop the cycle. It was that important to me.

And he's the monster for not responding to you. That's not what made him the monster. For needing space from you. The monster was not the guy who needed space. The monster was who he was when he came back. Not for doing drugs, Miss Hurd. Not for being violent. Just for needing space.

That's when you called Mr. Depp the monster. Incorrect. This does a few things, right? It makes it look like Amber Hurd was obsessive. that Johnny Depp would walk away when there were fights that maybe Amber Heard did something wrong to Johnny Depp and that she's vindictive when he needed space that's when she turned on him and started accusing him

that's the impression that could have been left in the mind of the jury at least that's what Johnny Depp's side is hoping for now on top of the fact that Hurd's explanation that she didn't want him to leave because she was worried he was going to go and do drugs and come back and be violent Look, that's definitely a possibility, but is it a plausible explanation for these texts? And then you add to the fact that there was surveillance video that was showing her and actor James Franco heading up to Hurd's penthouse at 11 p.m. at night while Depp was away. This is the day after

she says Depp hit her with a cell phone and before she went to the court to get a temporary restraining order against Depp. Just the timing of that, the way it looked, the optics, it makes her motivations very questionable. Now, Depp has been trying to portray her to someone who made up these allegations to benefit her career to become an ambassador for the ACLU to receive preferential treatment in Hollywood. But maybe most importantly, they say that she deliberately made this stuff up about Johnny Depp to get a bigger payout in the divorce. So there was this moment when Hurd's 2016 deposition in the divorce case is played and then Amber Heard on the stand reacts to it. And it's about whether or not she tipped off the media when she was going to court to get that temporary restraining order

because she claimed that Depp was violent towards her. Basically, I didn't want him to find out online that I had or was about to file or I had already filed for divorce. I wanted him to know verbally. So I was trying to reach him through a third party to tell him. When I say reach, I'm specifically saying I would like him to know information coming from. me or coming from Jerry from me so that he finds out about the divorce filing or my intention to do so from some other source other than TMZ which was alerted you slipped up there didn't you miss heard you let it slip out that TMZ had been alerted to your filing of the domestic

violence restraining order didn't you I disagree that's not what I'm talking about TMZ is the same outlet that you released the video of Mr. Depp attacking the kitchen cabinets the day before this deposition was taken, wasn't it? I didn't do that. I don't know how to do that. The copyright to that video now, doesn't it? I have no idea what TMZ owns. Did they pay you for that? I never got paid for it because I had nothing to do with that.

So TMZ was just lucky in getting the inside scooped your divorce from Mr. Depp, huh? I have no idea. It is not, that's not my area of expertise. I wouldn't even know how to do that. And also, what does that get me? If I wanted to leap things about Johnny, I could have done that in a much more successful way, in a bigger way, for years. Now when you were extorting him for $7 million? I got a fraction of what I was entitled to in the state of California, by the way.

And of course, Heard was criticized for not donating the $7 million to charities like she promised. So it all makes it look like Heard was in it for the money and the fame. But from there, they moved on to the subject of the actual lawsuit. And Heard's position is that the Washington Post article, thing that Johnny Depp is suing her for wasn't about Johnny Depp. You know, it doesn't mention his name. It wasn't about him. She said it was all about her experience after coming out with allegations against him, which,

by the way, I have to say, is quite ironic because the fact that she has publicly accused Johnny Depp of abuse and he, and she is now being criticized and hated online, that is the very thing that she warned about in the Washington Post article. So, you know, look, the jury is going to have to wonder whether or not the Washington Post article was really about Johnny Depp, was it defamation by implication, even though his name wasn't mentioned. But I just have to say that it is ironic that the thing that she warned about in the Washington Post article is happening right now. But then they moved into the counterclaims. And remember, Amber Heard is alleging that Johnny Depp, through his attorney, Adam Waldman,

engaged in a deliberate smear campaign against her, making defamatory statements about her lying about these abuse allegations. But I will tell you, it wasn't entirely clear how much of these statements actually hurt Amber Hurd, which is the same argument that we hear on the other side. How much did the Washington Post article hurt Johnny Depp? It's an important element in a defamation case. And also, it wasn't entirely clear what role Depp had in allegedly orchestrating this public smear campaign. But eventually, Hurd did leave the stand after a kind of disjointed redirect from her attorney. It was mostly interrupted by a peppering of objections from Camille Vasquez. And after Hurd left the stand, one of the stand, one of the same.

Once again, her team began calling more supporting witnesses. And that's when we saw the testimony of Amber's friend, Iot Tillett Wright. This is a name that's come up before in this trial. This is crucial because we haven't really seen the testimony of witnesses who said that they've physically seen or heard, Amber Hurd being abused by Johnny Depp. So this is important because he's a witness who allegedly overheard on the phone a potential physical altercation between Depp and Heard. away from the phone.

He came clomping back down the stairs. I heard like a noise. And then the phone dropped. And he said to her, oh, you think I hit you? You think I fucking hit you? What if I peel your fucking hair back? And then I heard the phone drop again, and then I heard her scream.

I remember her screaming. And I hung up the phone, and I called Raquel immediately, because I know that she lives one door away, and would her and her boyfriend, Josh, who's a big dude, would be able to get there the fastest. And I called her, texted her right away, and I hung up with her. immediately called 911 in New York and then I called a friend of mine in LA who I knew had met Amber a number of times and I think I may have placed a second call to NYPD now I'm all frazzled and I don't remember but I think I called NYPD the more Amber Heard can present corroborating witnesses like this the stronger her case becomes and the weaker John Depp's case becomes.

Thanks for joining us here on Sidebar. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this Law and Crime series. Add free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.