Law&Crime Sidebar - Heard Speaks, Top Gun Lawsuit, Attorney Sentenced

Episode Date: June 14, 2022

Law&Crime's Angenette Levy brings you Amber Heard's first sit-down interview since the verdict where a jury found her liable for defamation. Heard sat down with Savannah Guthrie of NBC News and clips will be released all week in the lead up to Friday's primetime Dateline NBC special. Plus, Paramount Pictures sued over its new film, Top Gun: Maverick. Also a Pennsylvania attorney learns his punishment for threatening to kill three members of the U.S. Senate. Attorney Shahrina Ankhi-Krol and former federal prosecutor, Gene Rossi, join Sidebar to break down the cases.GUESTS:Shahrina Ankhi-Krol, owner of Ankhi-Krol Law.Gene Rossi, former federal prosecutor.SUBSCRIBE 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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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. I have a right as an American to talk about what happened to me to own my story and my truth. I have that right. I just want Johnny to leave me alone. I just want him to leave me alone. That was Amber Heard during her rebuttal testimony. And now she's speaking out for the first time in an exclusive interview with Savannah Guthrie and NBC News. And we have some of that interview for you.

I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. And welcome to the latest edition of Law and Crime Sidebar. Thanks so much for joining us on this Monday as we bring you the latest in the aftermath of Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard and other top legal. news. First up, of course, Amber Hurd breaking her silence nearly two weeks after the verdict in Fairfax County, Virginia. You'll recall that a jury of five men and two women found her liable for defamation on every one of Johnny Depp's claims and awarded him $15 million in damages. That $5 million in punitive damages, though, is actually capped by state statute at $350,000. So the award that Depp will receive or may receive,

barring an appeal is actually $10,350,000. And Hurd has vowed to appeal. Now, the jurors awarded her two million dollars in damages for a statement Depp's lawyer Adam Waldman made in which he told the Daily Mail that Amber Hurd and her friends, quote, spilled some wine and roughed up the penthouse on May 21st, 2016, and then got their stories straight before calling police a second time to the penthouse. And Waldman was basically saying that this was a setup. Now to the interview with the Today Show and Savannah Guthrie.

I'm not surprised in the least. I'm going to tell you this, that Amber Hurd's first interview is with NBC News and Savannah Guthrie. I called this. The morning after the verdict, Elaine Brettahoff's first interview was with Savannah Guthrie and NBC News on the Today Show. So I just knew. I knew right then and there that Amber Hurd would grant her first interview to Savannah

Guthrie. And here's a clip of the interview that aired Monday on the Today Show. In it, Amber Heard talks about the harassment she says she has received online, and she discusses the verdict, the jurors, and those who testified for Johnny Depp. I don't care what one thinks about me or what judgments you want to make about what happened in the privacy of my own home and my marriage behind closed doors. I don't presume the average person should know those things, and so I don't take it personally. but even somebody who is sure I'm deserving of all this hate and vitriol, even if you think that I'm lying, you still couldn't look me in the eye and tell me that you think on social media

there's been a fair representation. You cannot tell me that you think that this has been fair. Of course, we also touched on what happened in court and what the jury decided. There's no polite way to say it. The jury looked at the evidence you presented. They listened to your testimony, and they did not believe you. They thought you were lying. How could...

I'll put it this way. How could they make a judgment? How could they not come to that conclusion? They had sat in those seats and heard over three weeks of non-stop relentless testimony from paid employees and towards the end of the trial, randos, as I say.

So you don't blame the jury? I don't blame them. It wasn't, I don't blame them. I actually understand. He's a beloved character and people feel they know him. He's a fantastic actor. Their job is to not be dazzled by that.

Their job is to look at the facts and the evidence. And they did not believe your testimony or your evidence. Again, how could they, after listening to three and a half weeks of testimony about how I was a non-credible person, not to believe a word that came out of my mouth? We're going to have more of our exclusive interview with Amber Heard first on today. Tomorrow and Wednesday morning, it's a wide-ranging sit-down. and then we'll have the conversation on a special date line this Friday night, hour-long, 8-7 Central. Now, those randos would include people like Morgan Knight, Morgan Tremaine, the former TMZ employee,

and possibly even Kate Moss, the supermodel, who testified in rebuttal for Johnny Depp, saying and telling the jury that Johnny Depp never threw her down a set of stairs, as Amber Hurd had claimed. Now, more of the interview with Savannah Guthrie and Amber Hurd will, play on Tuesday the 14th, Wednesday the 15th, and on Friday, June 17th on today. Also, a special date line will air on NBC Friday night at 8-7 Central. And we will, of course, bring you more of those clips. Now, after that clip played on the Today Show this morning, Amber Heard's team released the following statement. It says, Johnny Depp's legal team blanketed the media for days after the verdict with numerous statements and interviews on television. And Depp himself did the same on

social media. Ms. Hurd simply intended to respond to what they aggressively did last week. She did so by expressing her thoughts and feelings, much of which she was not allowed to do on the witness stand. Now, the statement is interesting to me for several reasons. First, Hurd's lawyer, Elaine Brettahoff, was the first person involved in this case in any fashion to grant a sit-down interview and it came the morning after the verdict. It wasn't even 24 hours later when she sat down with both Savannah Guthrie on Tivit today, and then later with CBS Mornings, Gail King and a company there. So she did the first two interviews in this case.

Depp's lawyers, Camille Vasquez and Ben Chu granted interviews eight days after the verdict to today and GMA. Chu also stopped by our studio answering our questions about the trial and the verdict the exact same day. Johnny is doing great. We face-timed him right after the verdict, and it looked like the weight of the world is off of his shoulders. The jury gave him his life back. Now, last week, Johnny Depp released a video on TikTok thanking his fans for supporting him.

He also thanked them in another video posted to his NFT Instagram account. He thanked them for their birthday wishes that they had sent him. He had turned 59 last week. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. See you. And just so you are aware, law and crime, I personally, Jesse Weber, has personally invited not only Amber Heard, but her lawyers, to do an interview with us, and they're welcome to sit down with us anytime they wish. We've been told that if they are interested, we will receive word of that. So far, that hasn't happened.

Now to our second story, it's a copyright lawsuit filed against Paramount Pictures involving its new film, Top Gun Maverick. Of course, we all remember the original Top Gun back in 1986, right? Tom Cruise, Kelly McGinnis. It was in the theater for weeks and months and weeks and months. Everybody loved it. The women were swooning over Tom Cruise and the guys wanted to be him. It was a big, big hit. Well, the story that Top Gun was based on was actually based on the story written by a man named Ehud Yone.

And it had been published in a magazine three years earlier. Well, now Yonay's family is suing Paramount saying that they did this new film without permission from them, without getting permission for the copyright and all of that stuff. So joining us to talk a little bit about this is attorney Sharina Anki Kroll. She's going to tell us a little bit about it. Sharina, thanks so much for coming on. Sharina, tell us a little bit about this lawsuit that's been filed by the Yonet family. From what I understand, Yone, who is the person that wrote an article, for a newspaper back in the 80s,

you know, had someone approach him from Paramount and say that, hey, I want to license this story and make movies out of it. That's my understanding of how this all started. So then he let Paramount have a license to the copyright, and now, many years later, his wife and son are coming forward to say that that license has expired. because of the 35-year rule.

Do you want me to get into the 35-year rule? Yes. Okay. So what the 35-year rule is is basically it allows the author or the owner of the copyright to basically come back to any rights of the copyright to and say, hey, I'm now taking it back. But in order to do that, they need to file something with the Copyright Office,

the United States Copyright Office, and also provide the people or the entities that they have given the license to, they also have to give them notice that, hey, this is being terminated. So this allows for authors of certain works that have been copyright protected to basically renegotiate contracts and to license it out in different ways at that 35-year mark. So what is happening here is a lot different from the other big case that's going on right now with Mariah Carey, but we won't be getting into that. This case, Paramount is not denying

that they have a legitimate claim from back then, that they actually had a license from Yone to use the story and then make the movie out of it, the first movie. Now, what's happening is Yonay's wife and son have come forth and basically said that that license expired in 2020. And by that time, as we all know, that Top Gun Maverick was already in production.

So what's happening here? Do we know if Top Gun producers or Paramount actually received the notice? Well, that's the main question that we have right now to see if Yone's wife and son actually provided Paramount with the necessary notice to say, hey, your license has ended. So, Sharina, it sounds like you think that the Yonais, have something to hang their hat on here? Absolutely. I mean, this is not a meritless claim on its face. Obviously, I don't know all the details, but, you know, having glanced over the complaint

itself, it doesn't seem to me to have absolutely no merit, right? So it does, on its face, seem to be a good case. And they're not only asking for damages, they're also asking for an injunction. Basically, they're asking the court to stop this movie from being shown anywhere, from being shown to the public or being published anywhere in any manner. So that in and of itself just almost goes to prove that, you know, they're probably just really aware of what's going on and they don't want the distribution, basically.

And it's not all about money. A lot of people are wondering, why don't you just wait until the movie was done showing because it is a huge hit and it would have more money, basically more money to settle this lawsuit with. But I think it's sort of like a, I wouldn't say publicity stunt, but it's kind of winning over people who believe that, you know, Paramount shouldn't have gone ahead and released it.

Sharina, it sounds to me like you think that possibly Paramount should just cut a check to the Oneys and be done with this. I think there's going to be a settlement because, you know, they're saying they've provided the notice and they're saying that they have already files with the Copyright Office, the 35-year rule, as it requires for the errors to gain that copyright back, the license back. So I believe there is going to be a huge lawsuit, a huge settlement. I'm sorry, there is already a lawsuit. There's going to be a huge settlement. But, you know, if I were the attorney for the Yonais, I would say maybe just wait until it's all done.

so there is money to collect, more money to collect, than right now. Because if there is an injunction and the court does ask them to stop showing the movie, that's kind of a double-edged sword because then it's not earning as much money as it would have if there were no injunctions. Sharina Anki-Kroll, thanks so much for coming on to talk with us about this. Now to our third and final story, and it involves a disbarred attorney from Pennsylvania. His name is Kenom Shirk, and he was sentenced to time served for threatening to kill Democratic members of the U.S. Senate. Joining me to talk about that is Gene Rossi, attorney out of Virginia and former federal prosecutor.

Gene, this is a really serious case threatening to kill members of the U.S. Senate. Tell me, as a former federal prosecutor, how serious this is. Oh, whenever a public official is being threatened, even if it's by text, email, or voicemail, And even if they don't carry it out by doing what this defendant did is, you know, getting a car with firearms and weapons and actually almost complete the mission, you always take it very seriously. Even a threat over text can raise the bar for any prosecution. They take it very seriously. And here's why. If you don't protect the participants in a democracy, regardless of what branch they're in, you know, the administration, judicial, or congressional, then your democracy is going to self-destruct. This makes me think back to that awful incident several years ago on the baseball field where a man opened fired on Steve Scalise and some other members of Congress. Thank God this didn't

end that way. It's funny. There's a basketball court right next to that baseball field in Alexander, Virginia, and I run a group called the Hoop Madness Club. One of our basketball backboards has a hole this big. The hole is from one of the bullets. And that's how close to home that is to me. I wasn't on the court when that happened, but I remember that vividly because I use that same YMCA where the defendant in that case used to go periodically. Yeah, and I know Representative Brad Wendstrup, he is a physician, and he sprang into action that day and saved Steve Scalise's life. It was a horrifying thing to think about anybody targeting anybody, but especially a public servant and elected official. So, Gene, were you surprised by the sentence in this case?

Jennifer P. Wilson, a U.S. district judge in Middle District of Pennsylvania, sentenced, sure. to time served, that's 16 months and 20 days in prison. So are you surprised by that sentence? Should he have gotten more time? Oh, I think he should. Not 30 years. But what's interesting, as I think the judge was very lenient and compassionate for the defendant. But I understand that the government recommended 18 months, and that could have been part of the plea negotiations. hey, if you plead early, don't force us to go to trial. We'll be relatively compassionate and lenient on the sentence of 18 months. But I got to tell you, the average citizen is going to say,

hey, listen, there are a lot of low-level drug dealers that get hammered, hammered with 5, 10, 15, 20 years. This person was trying to kill at least three U.S. senators and you give them 16 months or time served. That just doesn't square with justice. It certainly seems like he is getting off easy, and this all had to go, had to do with January 6th, and these senators carrying out their official duties back on January 6th of 2021 with regard to the election results, the presidential election where President Trump lost the election,

yet there were some people who feel that that was a fraud and wanted to stop that whole process and Vice President Mike Pence was one of the people that was targeted in all of that by some of these January 6th rioters. So this guy's going to be on probation for a little bit, supervised release rather, for one year and he's going to pay a $10,000 fine. So he's really going to have to mind his P's and Q's on that one year of supervised release, right, Gene? Oh, absolutely. Supervised release. If you get a tough supervision officer, For some people, it's not exactly like prison, but it does hamper their ability to get into trouble. Well, Gene Rossi, thanks so much, as always, for your time and your expertise.

Thank you. And that'll do it for this edition of Law and Crime Sidebar. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for joining us. You can catch our podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, YouTube, and wherever else you get your podcast. As always, thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time. You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.