- On Wednesday, a Virginia jury found Amber Heard and Johnny Depp responsible for the defamation.
- While Hurd condemned the verdict as a reprimand for the First Amendment, legal experts disagreed.
- “It’s not really a matter of freedom of speech, it’s really a matter of trust,” the former prosecutor said.
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Amber Heard complained on Wednesday that she had lost the right to “speak freely and openly” after a Virginia jury found her responsible for defamation in the case of her ex-husband Johnny Depp against her.
But legal experts told Insider that the six-week sensational trial was never really about freedom of speech, and said the sentence was unlikely to have future consequences for the First Amendment law.
“It’s not really a matter of freedom of speech, it’s really a matter of credibility,” said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of the West Coast Trial Lawyers. “The jury found that she was lying, and she knew she was lying.”
At the center of the case was Hurd’s 2018 Washington Post article, in which she said she had survived domestic and sexual violence. Depp’s name is not mentioned in the song, but he accused his ex-wife of ruining his reputation and career. Hurd then filed a lawsuit against Depp, claiming that he attacked her before and during their marriage, which ended in divorce in 2016. Depp denied the allegations.
After six weeks of reprimanding testimony, a jury on Wednesday found Hurd slandering Depp by awarding him $ 15 million in damages. They also found Depp responsible for defamation against Hurd after one of his lawyers called her allegations of sexual violence “fraud” and awarded her $ 2 million in damages.
While the First Amendment enshrines Americans’ right to free speech, the doctrine does not protect against defamatory speech – false statements that are presented as fact and cause further harm.
“This is not the First Amendment,” Mitra Ahurayan, a entertainment lawyer in Beverly Hills, told Insider.
“You can’t lie and make statements that hurt people. This is not a protected speech, “she added.
While Hurd’s legal team called on the jury to consider the consequences of the First Amendment, as it relates to Hurd’s right to publish his story in The Washington Post, Depp’s case depends more effectively on his accusation that the story she told is full of harmful lies about him, experts said. .
Depp’s legal team worked hard to drill holes in Hurd’s history during the cross-examination, highlighting inconsistencies in her testimony and questioning her credibility in a successful tactic.
For example, Hurd claims she did not play any role in the abuse, but was refuted by a court record that Hurd says she “hit” Depp, according to Ahouraian. Hurd testified that she acted in self-defense.
Hurd also said in 2018 that she had donated $ 7 million to settle her divorce for charity, but testimony from the trial revealed that she had not actually donated the money. She said she has not donated it yet because Depp is suing her for $ 50 million, but she still plans to do so.
Several experts also told Insider that Hurd’s graphic descriptions of Depp’s violence against her did not match photos of her injuries in court.
Roy Guterman, director of the Tully Center for Freedom of Speech at the University of Syracuse and an expert on the First Amendment, told Insider that the key factors were Hurd and Depp’s testimony and their “credibility and credibility and ultimately sympathy.” “The jury believes Johnny Depp is above Amber.” I heard. “
Legal experts told Ashley Coleman of Insider on Wednesday that Hurd lost her defamation lawsuit because she didn’t look credible and lacked her ex-husband’s stellar strength.
Celebrities face a much higher burden of proof when it comes to defamation cases. Public figures must prove that the defamatory statements about them were made with “real malice”, which means that the speaker knew that the statements were incorrect or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
“If you’re lying about someone and the jury thinks you’re lying, then you shouldn’t be protected in that way, and that won’t diminish your right to speak under the First Amendment,” said John Culhain, a law professor at Widener University. Delaware School of Law.
The fact that the jury found Hurd and Depp responsible for the defamation, given their status as public figures, only further emphasizes the unique nature of this particular case. The prevalence of conflicting evidence and the social media circus surrounding the trial have made the case “excellent” compared to other defamation trials, experts said.
“This case is so superb in so many ways that I wonder how much of an impact it will have,” Culhain said.
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