A jury in Fairfax, Virginia, on Wednesday ruled that actress Amber Hard was responsible for defaming her ex-husband, actor Johnny Depp, in a statement. The Washington Post Op-ed that he was a public figure “representing domestic violence.” The jury said Hard Depp had to pay 15 million in damages. The jury also found that Depp was responsible for defaming Hard through a comment made by his former lawyer, who called the stories of Hard’s abuse “fraud.” The jury for him said Depp paid Hard 2 2 million in damages. The verdicts were the final result of a six-week trial that seemed to spread popular culture. The tabloid title was and New York Times Headlines, wall-to-wall TV coverage and endless TikTok scroll, and, as it turns out, 2022, Brand Even if you tried your best to avoid justice, you knew about it. Depp vs. Heard Like the weather, a terrible storm surrounded us all.
Throughout the trial, Depp was draining the energy of a man preparing for victory. A few days before the verdict was announced, he attended a concert by Jeff Beck in England, the kind of performance that made him famous, all rock ‘n’ roll swagger and leading-man dressed in bold, outstanding fashion. The whole performance was so good that he showed up again and again. This was hardly a secret truth; Depp played at that first venue A Thanks Out Tweet. On the third show, supermodel Kate Moss, who once dated Depp and testified in her support, made an appearance. Where did you hear all this? I have no idea. Perhaps he was keeping a low profile. Maybe the media didn’t pay attention.
What this avoids is the hard documentation volume collected by. Close partners have been asked to take pictures of her injuries as if she were a victim of violence. The text messages and voice recordings he saved were threatened or insulted by Depp, as told by victims of intimate partner violence. The initial restraining order he received, just as a close partner is supposed to be a victim of violence, was granted by a Los Angeles judge at the beginning of Hard’s divorce from Depp in 2016. It also ignores the fact that it was the second trial Depp; He had previously sued the newsgroup newspaper, the publisher of the British tabloid The sun, For a title that calls him wife beating. It is noteworthy that in the United Kingdom দেশ a country whose defamation laws are so strict that it gave birth to the concept of “unmanned tourism” —Dep lost. The judge found that the article was “true enough.” By Wednesday, none of this was significant. A long editor’s note was parked right above Post ‘s op-ed.
Talking to it Post In a separate article, international media lawyer Mark Stephens explained that Depp’s victory was a matter of court strategy, especially something called Darwin – denial, assault and counter-victimization and criminalization – which seems to be a fancy summary of how the Internet works. He told the newspaper: “We find that Darwin works very well with juries but almost never with judges who are trained to look at evidence.” But I can’t shake the feeling that the most important strategic change can only be to change the legal adversary. In the UK, Depp has sued the journalist Dan Uton And a newspaper owned by Global Oligarch Rupert Murdoch. In the United States, Depp sued a woman, his ex-wife, which meant his lawyers could try and put up a real defense: some of these things may have happened, but he’s crazy, and nobody likes him.
Within 24 hours of the verdict, Depp posted a victory statement on Instagram, reiterating the decision not to speak out in the report of survivors of sexual and intimate partner violence. As the days went by, the list of celebrities who liked Depp’s victory post on Instagram only increased. According to a BuzzFeed tracker, 79 celebrities from all walks of life liked it. The list probably includes some of your favorites. Taika YTT? Listed. Lecith Stanfield? Listed. Pati Smith? Listed. Jennifer Aniston? Listed. The same article states that four celebrities liked Hard’s post, but one of them was Jason Momoa, who also liked Depp.
Maybe all these celebrities liked what Depp said because they think they are truly Depp’s friends. Or maybe they see him as just an example that is always valuable: a famous, powerful and rich man Depp, you might say, has heat. And what’s more important than heat? Who doesn’t want to be associated with a verified movie star who has just won a big one? And anywayYou can actually hear all those celebrities saying, The court found him not guilty. There is certainly no guilt or innocence in a civil case, but I highly doubt that many in the Depp community would be concerned about that detail.
I don’t know if a win for Hard would feel terribly different. Depp has plenty of money to file endless appeals and, even if he was found guilty, he would walk out of the courtroom for the cheerleaders, the fans, the supportive fans and a public relations team ready to turn any decision into a victory. How important can a jury’s verdict be when people everywhere around Depp seemingly signal to him that he’s doing great, that he’s winning?
“Criminal intimacy shifts the responsibility for policing violence from the community to the state,” University of Maryland law professor Lee Goodmark wrote in his book. Decriminalizing domestic violence. “While that initial step has been compounded by the community’s failure to adequately protect people from abuse, the result is that the community is freed from any responsibility or power to hold community members accountable without resorting to criminal legal action.”
By outsourcing violence to intimate partners in our courts, our communities have absolved themselves of the difficult but necessary task of holding our members – themselves – accountable. The winner of Depp’s courtroom is personally less valuable to him than his community, which now has the necessary cover to carry it arbitrarily. Now it’s okay to continue working with Depp, because a court has granted him a waiver. Now you can feel better about watching Caribbean pirates And Edward Scissorhands And Ed Wood Without a second thought, because a court had released him. Most importantly, no one needs to spend a second on the damage that Depp can do, because a court has cleared him. It’s not only an easy way to avoid the hard work of going through hard evidence but, according to Michael Hobbes, Depp’s recorded history of mood swings and paparazzi attacks on set, as well as the accounts of actresses Ellen Birkin and Jennifer Gray give him controller, paranoid and gray Describe in the memoir as “crazy jealous”. After the court acquitted him, why would he jump on any of these?
Depp and his legal team and his public relations team and his management team knew that physical evidence would not be very important in this case. They knew it depended on a much simpler equation: celebrity plus cash. The court battle was a framing device, a descriptive tool to give Depp fans and friends what they wanted, a way to keep feeling good about it. That so many people are willing to admit that it may not be a comfortable truth to sit so easily, but it is a fact that millions of people who have survived violence always know.