Amber Heard's lawyer reveals what actress said right after verdict
Hours after a jury found that Amber Heard defamed Johnny Depp in an op-ed published in The Washington Post and awarded Depp $10.35 million in damages, Heard is feeling "heartbroken," her lawyer Elaine Charlson Bredehoft told "CBS Mornings" on Thursday.
"One of the first things she said when she came back from the verdict when we went into the conference room, was 'I am so sorry to all these women,'" Bredehoft recalled. "She felt like she had let down all of these women because she had more evidence than most people do. And yet they still didn't believe her."
Bredehoft called the verdict — in which Depp was also found liable for a statement his attorney made to the Daily Mail calling Heard's claims a hoax and ordered to pay Heard $2 million — a "major setback for women." She said the jurors' verdict sent a message to all domestic abuse victims.
"Amber had an enormous amount of evidence, although a lot of it was suppressed in this case as opposed to the U.K. But look at all the women who have no evidence. All these women who suffer from domestic violence, domestic abuse, and they don't have evidence," she said. "And basically what this jury said is unless you pull out your cell phone and you tape record your spouse beating you, you're out of luck."
Heard's lawyer said that evidence was suppressed during the six-week trial held in Virginia, compared to a 2020 libel lawsuit against the U.K.'s Sun newspaper, which referred to Depp as a "wifebeater." Depp lost that case.
"What they learned from the U.K. case is to demonize Amber, which is what they did, and to try to suppress as much of the evidence that came in in the U.K. and did not come in in the United States," she said.
She also believes that Depp's celebrity status, cameras in the courtroom, and social media played a role in the verdict.
"We had cameras in the courtroom. Here, we had not only did we have a group of Depp fans that were there every day, 100 were allowed in, they lined up at one in the morning for wristbands to be in that courtroom, but we had everything on camera, and we had tremendous social media that was very, very, very much against Amber," said Bredehoft.
Heard's lawyer does admit that there were some things that her team wishes they could have done differently. She added that she thinks the atmosphere of the trial was what played the ultimate role.
"Are any of us perfect? No. Is there something else we feel we should have done? Yes. Absolutely. I always, I redo my closings 100 times afterwards, whether I win or lose. That's part of being a good lawyer, a good trial lawyer is that there's always something," she said. "But I think that there were a lot of influences here that were beyond our control. And I think the social media, it was like a Roman coliseum, is the best way to describe the atmosphere here."
Bredehoft said that Heard plans to appeal the verdict.
