Lurker > PrivateBiscuit1

Crescent-Moon posted...

Who is Bad Bunny

Ask your barber

Shout out to my wrestling friends here who are the only ones to get this joke.

Are you asking the legal standard for domestic abuse? I'm not sure what you're asking. Because that's also irrelevant here. The court would need to decide if they believe it or not, only because the question is "Did she lie about saying Johnny Depp physically abused her?" I don't even know if a definition of domestic abuse will even factor into the jury instructions.

It's really as simple as "Do you think she lied?" after overcoming the threshold of whether or not she was talking about Johnny in the first place.

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

So assuming the jury believes the article is about Depp, what is the standard of belief for it not to be libel? Does Heard need to definitively prove abuse or just need to show a credible enough claim?

By a matter of law, they need to prove that she did not knowingly lie. Which is easy, because she knows whether or not she had been a victim of domestic abuse or not because she lived it. It's up to the jury to decide whether or not she was.

I just don't think there's enough here to prove Johnny Depp ever laid a hand on her though, just judging by the UK information.

Also, today starts with tech issues with a Zoom testimony. lol

Additionally, thanks everyone for the kind words as I detail this mess.

Corrik7 posted...

Whether she abused him also is extraneous to the case though isn't it?

Sort of.

One part is if the jury agrees "Yeah, she was talking about him." Then they need to decide "Okay, so was she telling the truth about being abused by him?"

They also have evidence of the ACLU writing the article and talking about "Look at how well we're evading your NDA!" in this in emails, and that Amber wanted Johnny originally named in it. That will likely be presented by Depp's team during cross examination. Intent is important too.

Then they play a phone call after Amber got the restraining order and all the articles came out where Johnny is talking to Amber and she's saying her team forced her to pretend like she was abused, and that she can't go back on it now because it would ruin her credibility, and then kept trying to pass the buck but she was getting incoherent about it all about calling the cops, saying that her friend told her Johnny would call the cops on her or something? She's just out of her mind in this clip. Eventually he rightfully said "Come on Amber, I lost a fucking finger and you threw a bottle of mineral spirits at my nose." (He explained she also threw a bottle at his face and busted open the bridge of his nose.) And then Amber says the infamous, "Tell the world Johnny! Tell the world that I, Johnny Depp, a man, I'm a victim too of domestic violence."

The last question they asked was "What did you say in response to that?" And Depp says, "I told her yes, I am." This was a master class of a conclusion, frankly. I don't think it could have ended better. Amber's face during this entire sequence was the most sour expression.

And we are finally done with Johnny Depp's testimony! Next up was Ben King, who was the "house manager" but he's basically the butler. He was obscenely British and a crazy good witness. He remembered god damn everything. He specifically testified the number of escape exits in the house in Australia where Amber claimed she was "held hostage for 3 days", to prove there were so many exits for her to leave. This will be important for later.

He mentioned seeing Johnny and Amber having arguments before this. He said he never saw anything physical though, like most people. He also said that he would have to replace two wine bottles every time Amber was there, and he knew Depp didn't drink that wine.

He was asked about the day Johnny's finger got blown off, where he was asked to come in late. He said Amber was hysterical there and Jerry Judge (the security guard of Johnny's that passed away) consoled her. Dr. Kippur told King to try finding the finger tip. Kippur, btw, has both King and Debbie confirming he "remembered" fuck all about that night somehow. King was the one who found the finger tip. He said it was inside a "kitchen napkin" (which the cross got really weird about him saying when we knew it was a paper towel). It was on the floor at the bar.

This man then described, in excruciating detail, the damage in the house in every room, because he spent 12 hours cleaning all of it. From my understanding a vast majority of it was from Amber that night. He was the one who took pictures of it all, which he said was standard for when there was damage.

He said after cleaning it, they all went to the airport to leave the island. He was sitting next to Amber which... holy shit I can't imagine having to sit next to her after that. King eventually asked what happened and Amber said in response, "Ben, have you ever been so angry with someone that you just lost it with them?" He said no, he's usually pretty calm. lol So she asked him a second time and looks completely shocked that he hadn't. And then he said "I mean, not unless you count when I was a kid and wasn't allowed out or something." This sweetheart. He dropped it there though. She gave him some crazy eyes in the courtroom during this.

He also said he noticed some marks on her arm. I'm not sure the significance of this yet, but I think they want to say Johnny scratched her, or she scratched herself? I dunno.

They asked this dude entirely too many questions on cross. Like hello, what do you possibly have to ask this man? Why, they tried to impeach him of course, and utterly failed in an embarrassing fashion. The questions they asked him were ridiculous and he never got caught in anything. He asked for his understanding of how Johnny lost his finger at one point and then immediately after asking went "OBJECTION HEARSAY" and the Judge said "You asked the question." Just... embarrassing lawyering there.

They tried to get him to say that Amber didn't also write on the walls and mirrors with lipstick and he was just like "Uh, it was more waxy, so yes it wasn't paint." He kept asking him and it was so dumb. And they also tried to imply he withheld some images, which was some legal fuckery (spoilers: Amber's team didn't ask for any because they don't want to know what is on the rest of the pictures because it hurts their clients). It wouldn't be so bad but he wasted like five minutes on this. He says he never saw a penis drawn on anything though. I don't know why this is significant. He also said he saw no writing in blood either though. All of these lines of questioning were so worthless and I don't understand them. Just ask this guy three questions and say see ya.

The re-direct wasn't too meaningful. Just hitting on a few important details and sending him on his way. That's it for this day! I'm all caught up now on summaries!

DAY 8

I lost a lot of this, so I'm going to try and hit the most important stuff. Sorry for the brevity with the rest of the cross exam.

Firstly, this was a disaster. But it started strong. They play a few clips of Johnny calling Amber a fat ass, See You Next Tuesday, and something else. They should have included this sooner.

They play another audio where Rottenborn claims that Amber was yelling "get off me!" and he said "No, but I did hear me in the distance saying 'See you later.'"

They use bad faith texts that say "hit" in them like they got their intern to search for anything with the word hit in them. Like stuff where "I hit a wall in my argument with Amber last night." When it's obvious to anyone he's referring to the argument getting nowhere, not literally hitting a wall. It was all so tiresome.

The most embarrassing part of all of this came, and I cannot believe the Judge let this in. Rottenborn pulled up a bunch of articles from before Amber wrote her op-ed from bullshit magazines and tabloids that were negative after questioning Johnny about whether or not he's had negative articles written about him before Amber, to which he was like yes because I've been in the industry for decades. So he reads off a bunch of shitty articles that are laughably bad. Everyone in the courtroom is trying not to laugh. Depp outright calls them hit pieces and says "These are all dreck, sir. This is a pathetic attempt." At the end he just asks how the author knows.

They show the paper article again and Johnny says he has never seen this and is suing for the one published prior, and they changed the title to avoid repercussions. It was stricken, obviously, but the jury heard it. What comes after this is a deluge of bad faith questions Rottenborn asks to try getting his narrative across, which was the right thing to do. But they successfully objected to 90% of the questions in. He asked about why he didn't fight the restraining order, why he's suing, the article, why he's not suing Washington Post, the Sun lawsuit, and other things. God, if you were the jury you see him get this many objections in a row, you just don't think he's acting in good faith at all. I feel this backfired. Amber Heard looked incensed during this, giving glares at the Judge and like she was holding back an explosion. It was wild.

So if you were the jury and bought any of that "You were suing over THIS article, right?" bullshit, the online article Johnny Depp keeps asking about? On re-direct, the first thing they do is put that online article up that has the headline "Amber Heard: I spoke up against sexual violence -- I faced society's wrath. That has to change." So they proved that Heard's team is just acting in bad faith even more by peddling that newspaper article printed days later. Just brilliantly dismantled all of their work they put into that. They reiterate that Disney ejected him from the Pirates franchise days later.

If there's one drawback of Johnny Depp, I think I mentioned before he has ADHD and meanders away from the question a lot, and his memory is absolute shit and he doesn't know what films he did when. Just a side note since I'm shaking my head at some of the re-direct as they try to reign him in. She had to remind him he was a part of the Fantastic Beasts franchise ffs.

Then they talk about Amber Heard's absolute hatred of Paul Bettany, who is one of Johnny's closest friends. Depp says Amber felt he was a threat for his time with her. As it turns out, Paul Bettany's family visited Johnny and Amber on their island one day, Amber and Paul got into an argument and Amber got extremely heated, loud, and mean, and Paul's 18 year old boy spoke up since he had been studying the topic of conversation in school and was knowledgeable about it, and Amber screamed and berated this kid until he cried. Just unbelievable. And then Johnny had Amber flown OFF the island and told her she couldn't treat people that way. This tracks with the many times that he's said that throughout his testimony. "You can't always be right. You should try being wrong sometime. You might learn something."

He explains that awful witch set of texts he sent to Paul Bettany as a Monty Python joke and just dark humor. He also had to explain clear jokes in some texts like when he said he drank 1,000 red bulls and vodka, having to say "I mean I'd be dead if I did that."

They also linked Johnny being stuck with Amber's abuse to the abuse his mother gave him too, which was an exceptional thing to do. Overall, re-direct was outstanding and just blew up anything the cross tried to do because... it's just so easy to explain it all with a little bit of context, which they didn't allow.

He elaborated he said his finger was caught in the accordion door because he didn't want to put Amber in that position, himself, his children, or the movie in the position to have the domestic abuse stuff hanging over it.

I can detail a lot of these, but I think I've explained why a lot of them are bullshit and just common sense and context prevails.

They have an audio recording of Amber screaming for COUCH! Which I guess is their word to sit down and talk. And she sounded very, very drunk and said "And you just threw a fucking cigarette at me!" Johnny explained he just flicked ashes of a cigarette out, and would never, ever flick it at her and said she was certainly not yelling in pain or anything. This is a trend of Amber sounding hysterical or making up claims of abuse, especially when the audio is running.

There's another clip they play of Amber arguing with Johnny as he's trying to leave her, including taking off his ring. She sounds absolutely out of her mind here. Johnny seems calm for the most part. She basically begs and forces him to stay throughout it, while also being evasive while the recording is on when he remarks his ear is ringing still. Because apparently she slapped him hard on the side of the head.

Another clip is played where Amber is telling him that he can't walk away from an argument ever because it gives her so much stress and that she thinks she's going to die from stress if she keeps doing that to her because it hurts so bad and that she's killing him by walking away. She sounds very drunk here too.

Depp's attorney brings up the audio that they played the other day with the knife and Amber telling him not to cut himself. They didn't play it again for obvious reasons. He explained the situation was that Johnny was reached out to by Amber's one agent to talk under the pretenses they would discuss her retracting her statement and coming clean about the lies she told. He said he wasn't threatening to hurt himself. He said he held out a knife to her and told her to cut him, and take his blood, since she took everything else from him. And she said she refused to and that he would have to do it himself. And he said he was actually thinking about it because psychologically he was at his end and broken from it all. He re-iterated that at no point was there any threat against Amber with that knife. He also said that he knew it was Rottenborn's job, but he found it quite cruel... and then he was rightfully objected to and cut off.

HeroicCrono posted...

If she secretly recorded him in California that is likely a felony in and of itself.

Statute of limitations means it's been too long to press charges against, and I'm not as familiar with this, but I believe you have to file a charge with the police before they can look into it too.

Team Rocket Elite posted...

We're those illegally recorded as well? I think you mentioned earlier that Johnny asked for permission while Amber did not. But, I'm not sure if they applied across the board.

Yes, Johnny explained he had always asked for permission before recording, and Amber had done most of her's in secret. There are some that are framed in a way that is kind of suspicious, where they're talking and Amber is screaming at Johnny not to talk about a certain thing right now, almost like it would add context to what they're talking about.

They started it initially because Amber would claim to not remember things she said or outright deny them, so Johnny and Amber would start recording things so they could play them back to one another. Which oh my god if you're at that point then fucking escape this hell.

California, where most of them were taken, is a two-party state, which means that you can only record when both parties consent to it, and no other people are involved. I know Virginia is a one-party state, so you don't need consent to record. But my best guess for this is because they just decided they want all the recordings in because, as we found out today, there are a LOT that make Amber look awful as well, including ones of her admitting to hitting him, the infamous "Tell the world that you were abused and see if they believe you" clip, among other ones.

Another example of this disaster of a cross is when Johnny texted something about picking up drugs and he responded "Yes, but there's nothing in there that says I took the drugs." And Rottenborn just lets out this frustrated sigh and reaffirms that he picked them up. It wasn't here, but he had stated a couple times that he picked up the drugs for Amber specifically the day that he had his finger cut off. Another disaster moment was Rottenborn said that he asked someone for cocaine and ecstasy the after he told his doctor that his finger was cut off. Johnny Depp points out that it wasn't then, he was asked to get it for Amber before because Rottenborn was mis-calculating the time zones very purposefully. He also said he doesn't do ecstasy because he can't get that high anymore because of his addiction.

Rottenborn just got so frazzled at this point and he couldn't recover. His questions just got sloppier.

They discuss the damage of Johnny painting the lies of Amber after his finger got blown off, and they asked if he drew a penis on one of the paintings. Johnny said he doesn't think so, but that Amber was adding to what he drew so it's very likely she had done so instead. So she was involved in the stuff being defiled and broken too while Johnny was having his nervous breakdown. He wrote on a lampshade "Good luck and be careful at top" and Johnny said "Yes, and I think it's good advice."

Rottenborn tries another pathetic gotcha where he says that Johnny told some people his finger was caught in the accordion door while he told the surgeon it was cut with a knife. Johnny said no, that it was a member of his team that said that, and he only ever said it was an accordion door, and they had all agreed to keep Amber's name out of it. Rottenborn pulls up the transcript again and points out someone told the surgeon that's what happened and Johnny is just confused and goes "Yeah, it wasn't me. There's nothing in that statement that says that I told him that."

And then he plays a two second clip of Johnny and Amber talking over each other and claims Johnny was saying "The day I chopped my finger off." And Johnny is just like "No, I think I said 'The day I got my finger chopped off'." They play it three times and it is impossible to hear. But Rottenborn keeps telling Johnny that he said "The day I chopped my finger off" and getting so mad he won't agree with him. Then Johnny also pointed out that he mis-quoted something in another audio clip earlier and Rottenborn got more aggressive before Depp's team objected on the basis of argumentative.

Rottenborn also gets a clip of Johnny saying "even if I did headbutt you, I hit you in the forehead not the nose" in that situation I mentioned before, but Johnny corrects him saying that he was using Amber's words and that if you want to have a peaceful conversation with Ms. Heard, you need to placate to her. Which makes sense given how fucking insane she is in every situation and audio recording.

Then we have the clip that Amber "totally didn't sell to TMZ" where he's cursing and knocking shit around while she tried to secretly record him, when he was angry that his accountants and agents had taken $700k+ that morning, and she was grinning and laughing at the end of it. And they acted like she was just terrified of him then. Johnny asked for a date for "this illegally recorded tape." "I thought the most interesting part of the video was that she was hiding it from me and she was laughing and smiling at the end, were she so afraid of me at the time." And "I assaulted a few cupboards, but not Ms. Heard." Also Rottenborn said he poured a "mega pint". Has anyone heard anyone say "mega pint" before?

The only thing that they have Johnny read is a comment well after Amber got the restraining order where he says something foul about Amber. He then offers to read the next message and Rottenborn is just arguing with him over who says it. I'm convinced now, in hindsight, they didn't have Johnny read them because he'd read the texts as they were meant to be read and not as they're presented.

Then Rottenborn reads a message about him saying "I have other uses for your throat that do not include injury..." He reads it twice, and Johnny says "Can you read it again?" And the court laughs because come on. Just come on. We're taking sexting and trying to attribute violence to it? They just show more texts and Johnny just starts correcting every single mistake that Rottenborn makes in reading it.

They end this disaster on a rather shitty note. They play an audio of Johnny feeling suicidal after Amber tricked him into coming to talk and break his restraining order, where she was saying "Don't cut yourself" and other stuff. (This was confirmed by the next day of trial.) And Johnny just gave Rottenborn a hell of a death glare after it. This was the last thing played, devoid of context, before the three days before trial resumed. I have no doubt Amber demanded this be played to hit Johnny hard in these three days between trials.

This was a complete disaster. They have no defense. If they had anything more solid than what I typed here, they would have presented it. Spoilers: The rest of the cross examination is also very bad the following day. All of these recordings and texts and there is not a single admission from Johnny of actual abuse, or any evidence he had done so. If there was, it would have been presented here. If there was, Amber wouldn't have to make up a ton of lies about the situation. It should be simple.

DAY 7

This is the continuation of the cross-examination of Johnny Depp. I'm just going to put all of this out here at the front: this was miserable. There are a few shining gems of success from Rottenborn here between him taking play on words or clear jokes to make it seem like Johnny was seriously saying things about being abusive, and saying "drug man bad", while also playing some clips that ranged from effective to baffling why they even put them out there. It was today it became extremely apparent they just have no real defense.

Another reason this will be frustrating to summarize is because this was all over the place. There's no story, there's no cohesive timeline they're trying to follow. They are just going across all amount of years in an attempt to confuse the jurors of everything, and it probably worked to their detriment. So at best I can just pluck out important stuff from here. And, yes, Johnny was often throwing barbs at the attorney.

To put it in perspective, I'll explain the first line of questioning. The day prior, Johnny testified that it didn't make sense to him about how beating someone to make them do what he wanted didn't make sense to him. And then this day, he opens by having Johnny tell a story about how once his father hit him out of frustration as a kid and he did what he wanted. Thus, he actually WOULD think beating someone would make them do what they want. This is the sort of thing we're dealing with.

There's also a text where him and Paul Bettany are joking about Amber being a witch, based on a Monty Python sketch, about burning her, drowning her, and fuck her corpse to make sure she's dead. You might think "Wow! That's really bad!" And yes, it is. But this is the worst of what they had on things he said about her, which is why they opened with this. And it's SO STUPID because on re-direct, they're just going to have him explain this and make it reasonable (spoilers: he did).

They start pulling up texts about him drinking and doing pills and also about them slinging insults at each other. And for half of these, he gives a perfectly reasonable explanation to them. And they make a big deal out of his usage of the word "Monster" because Amber has said it was what he turned into when he drank or got high, and half the examples they have are of the "Monster" being his addiction.

Then they show the infamous picture of the coke and the entire glass of whiskey with a bunch of identifying information and oops Amber Heard's driver's license there, all carefully placed. If you heard about this originally, you probably saw it and may have thought "This seems fake." In fact, Johnny called it "Quite a composition." He continues to allude to it being fake. But this is where that exchange someone linked to Johnny having cocaine in a box. It was literally the only instance they found of any "lie" Johnny told, when he said he doesn't think he carried cocaine in his little box, and he said in the UK trial he did have cocaine in this box. It's such a non-issue though because they literally didn't catch him giving another single different answer from the UK trial. Johnny remarked things were "perfectly placed" in the image and just didn't let up on keeping it in their heads that this picture is fake because it's so absurd.

Rottenborn also lost numerous objections because they kept going to a sidebar to discuss them. Another frustrating thing is that he would play clips and not include a question with them, which is improper and they should have been objecting to these too.

They also want to present that he would black out, and he used another picture you may have seen with him having ice cream all over his lap. He mentioned that Amber had given him the ice cream to hold and he fell asleep since he had worked 17 hours straight on a film. And "I was not partaking in the festival of ice cream, clearly, since my other hand was in my pocket." And Rottenborn says, "So you're saying it was her fault for this picture then?" And he said, "She snapped it." Throughout this day, he clarifies he hasn't blacked out at all and was just passing out or going to sleep.

They also opened Johnny up to explain that opiates didn't get him high because it's an extreme downer, and he took them to get his body regular when he was addicted. Later, he also tries to explain how that works and Rottenborn cuts him off eventually, because Johnny knows exactly what he's talking about, and he said "Sorry, I was just trying to school you."

Rottenborn also brought up a lawsuit in which Johnny is being sued for supposedly punching someone in the face on set and that should have gotten the Judge screaming at him, and after a sidebar they actually let him ask a little bit about it. I do not understand how this Judge decides her objections.

He got Johnny to tell a story about how he was out with Amber and a bunch of Amber's friends and one woman got extremely high and was hanging all over Amber and he took her hand off of Amber and told her that the girl needs to learn how to handle herself if she had drugs and that she was being rude and invasive. Rottenborn tried to hit him with a gotcha by claiming he actually screamed at her and told her "Keep your hands off of my girl" and he had said that wasn't how it went. So Rottenborn pulled the UK transcript and read it happening like I had explained it above. So when anyone points to the "cocaine box" stuff, this right here is how it went most of the rest of the time--Rottenborn trying to catch him on things when HE was the one who misremembered. He used this to try saying Johnny was jealous but Johnny explained that was a small part of the argument and was saying he was protecting her. Oh and he also punched something in the bathroom.

And the audacity of this one, where he tries to get Johnny to admit he was drunk on the plane incident and he re-reads the UK transcript where his answer was "Sure, for the purposes of getting through this, let's say yes. Everything that you said, I agree." Like you would need to be an idiot to think he actually meant he was admitting to it with that. He also plays an audio of Johnny making awful moaning noises of pain and Rottenborn says it was on the flight, and Johnny says it definitely was not.

Apparently Johnny was pretty pissed that the Pirates 5 screenplay sucked, and he thought it should be much better, and was rather depressed about it because he had done so much for the Jack Sparrow character and felt he was just being wasted.

Quick summary for today is that cross continued with Johnny Depp and started off well and then slowly went into just complete disaster that convinced nobody, and came back a little bit before getting back to the article itself and did and okay job presenting their argument.

But then re-direct came in and just dismantled their argument dead, and they had a really effective re-direct that ended with the clip of Amber Heard saying the "Go ahead and tell the world you, a man, was abused and see who believes you!" With Depp saying after "I was."

The butler was the next witness and discussed the carnage of the finger severing incident with absurd detail and their cross was completely pathetic. They should have asked no less than 3 questions to this guy. Really solid witness.

Her hair does look like it costs more than my rent though.

CoolCly posted...

Is that lawyer's name really Rottenborn?

Sounds like a character from a Tim Burton movie. Starring Johnny Depp.

Yes, it is deeply tragic and I don't know how you don't change your name from that it you become an attorney.

Also cross is finally done and today and was a complete disaster, barely strung together at the end with a so-so close that I feel really missed the mark.

Depp's lawyers immediately dismantled their claims that Johnny had no right to sue Amber of the article on re-direct.

CedarPointcp posted...

i completely agree, what is the best coaster at that six flags?

https://youtu.be/DX_wprkggoE

Also Cedar Point is the best my dude.

Literally at Six Flags North of SF right now!

Hoping to go to other ones too this year because amusement parks are the best.

banananor posted...

I'm surprised, I thought you normally weren't allowed to bring in statements from other trials

But I guess the lawyers agreed that the 2019 whatever was relevant

They agreed that the decision of that case cannot be used to present proof of guilt or innocence.

It benefits Depp's team to have Amber Heard's deposition from that trial included because, frankly, she contradicted many stories in it and was pretty manic during them. It only helps their case.

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/3/AAMkRCAADKsP.jpg https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/4/AAMkRCAADKsQ.jpg

lmao

Yeah, that was a weird moment. Mostly because it was really the only thing that the attorney really "caught" him on. I'm willing to see how they deal with that on re-cross, if they bother, because the image in question is likely set up. You may have seen it floating around. Ultimately it's not a huge hit to credibility at all considering how many other times this guy failed to impeach him in an entire day.

neonreaper posted...

i Havent read much of this topic but I see the word harmlessly and curious was it from the trial?

I don't remember if that was the exact wording he used, but he did the motion of gentle underhand tossing as an example on court as he demonstrated specifically what he did with it.

Wedge Antilles posted...

"Stop hitting me Johnny! Stop hitting me!"

That line there seems odd to me. What, are there two people hitting you and you need to specify which one you want to stop hitting you? Seems like a painfully obvious attempt to fake a recording of you getting hit to use against someone later.

Yes, Johnny described it somewhere that he felt it was an ambush, since he hadn't done anything and Amber's one friend Rocky stormed in out of nowhere telling him to stop when he was 20 feet away. It's very, very curious that both Rocky and the girl on the phone were both not called as witnesses from Amber's team despite supposedly heard and witnessing Johnny beating up on Amber that night. Especially since they would be able to testify about so many other things in their relationship to help Amber's case if anything she said was true.

Also, I have one more day of recaps to catch up on, and I hoped to do it before the next day of trial tomorrow, but I'll be at Six Flags all day, so it's unlikely I'll get to it! Admittedly, it should be a lot shorter since it's mostly just repetitive nonsense from Heard's team with nothing really significant. And it bounces all over the place, so there's absolutely no cohesive story to it at all.

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

No, Tony's got a point. There's being an advocate for the issue of domestic abuse and then there's whatever the fuck Stan Twitter is doing, going out of there way to dogpile anyone even slightly skeptical of Depp or credulous towards Heard. I mean we've still got like another month of this trial to go or something? Calm down.

Maybe I'm just becoming a cynical old man but when you get to the point where fashion brands and influencers snipping trial clips on TikTok you've moved pretty cleanly from advocating against abuse to shamelessly profiting and self-promoting from it. Deranged behaviour.

You're literally just describing stan TikTok about any issue ever. They're gross mutants about everything and nothing can help that.

TikTok users are just using the current big thing to try to get more engagement. Who actually cares about them ever.

But if you've ever seen domestic abuse play out and explode like this on a far smaller scale with friends and family, you would know it has "teams" involved too.

And if you've been through domestic abuse and emotional manipulation from a significant other, or you have someone dear to you who has been through it, or you or someone close has been falsely accused of it, this is significant to them too.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

The coverage of this trial from the fans of both people involved is so fucking weird lmao. Turning domestic abuse into a team sport, so wild

I hope you continue to be fortunate enough that domestic abuse won't be a big deal to you, Tony.

banananor posted...

Little finicky gotchas like that don't play well with juries, I think

common example is when victims/witnesses describe the wrong color of pants worn by the defendant

It's a little different when in the opening statement it is thrown in the jury's face while this mad woman shrieks at you about how her client carried this same, exact concealer, and how she was going to testify the exact combination of colors to conceal her bruise based on each day of healing. Like, they literally said it was the exact one and that Amber was going to show them each color combination she used, and it was so important that it warranted it being shoved in their face.

It was hardly a minor thing. They claimed it was a massive part of their defense, this very specific concealer kit. And it was offered into evidence as the very same one that she had supposedly been carrying around for the entire duration of their relationship.

Then he said he was 20 feet away from Amber in another room and a different friend of Amber's ran into the home and screamed "Leave her alone, Johnny! Leave her alone!" And while Amber was still in the other room on the phone with her friend, she started screaming "Stop hitting me Johnny! Stop hitting me!" in a freaked out voice. And then Johnny's security ran in and she noticed them and said "That's the last time you'll ever hit me again!" while he's still 20 feet away from her. They took him away and he said that was the last time he saw her until she asked him to break the restraining order a couple months later. So basically, he says she was trying to set him up and ambush him.

Next up, they play a recording where Amber Heard told Johnny Depp he hopes that his son's step father can teach him how to be a man, because his step father has more manliness in his left nut. "How often did Amber bring your children into your arguments?" "Too often." He reiterates they are far more intelligent than he is and wouldn't be around her because of how they treated her, and that his daughter wrote a letter stating as much to Amber.

He said the day Amber had claimed she was being abused was the same day he was attending his daughter's birthday and the same day Alice In Wonderland 2 was debuting, which he was in. She knew he was out of the city when Amber decided to announce he had abused her. She convinced him not to file for divorce before him so "nobody would know", and stated that she only pretended to be abused because her lawyers told her to, which all makes no sense. All of this kind of had to be reigned in by Depp's attorney, who used exhibits to make sure all the details got in there. Good work on her part.

Depp also stated he had never been accused of hitting a woman before this, and that slowly his calls became fewer and fewer from agents and other folks like that. He could only talk to his closest friends with it, and just didn't talk to most anyone else about it and was so hurt he just didn't talk to many people in general. He said his team told him that the only way to really get his life back on track, despite him wanting to fight back against these allegations, was to just go through with the divorce and put out a joint statement.

They agreed to a $7 million settlement, and the lawyers wrote the joint statement, not them. He has no idea who actually wrote it. Amber had said in interviews half of the money would go to ACLU and the other half to a Children's Hospital, which was a violation of the agreement since neither were supposed to talk about their divorce proceedings. When she did, Johnny had the first of those payments sent to the organizations in her name, and she called absolutely livid and that she deserved $14 million because of that. (Spoilers: she never actually donated a cent of it)

He discussed the Washington Post article in which she mentioned the domestic abuse and he said he agreed with many things in the article in terms of violence against women, but not about her claiming that she was abused by him. He's not outright stated, but anyone would reasonably know she was talking about him. He says Disney officially cut him off of Pirates 6 after that. When asked what he lost as a result of Amber's claims, he said "Nothing less than everything" and elaborated that she painted him as some insane, woman beating, cocaine-fueled maniac which wasn't true at all. He said that even if he wins this trial, he still loses because he has to live with that label over him.

That's the end of his testimony! And with 15 minutes left, they were ready to pack up for the day, but Amber's attorney Rottenborn says he would like to make use of these 15 minutes and get started with the cross examination. And honestly? It was a great play for him. He's a good lawyer with monumentally bad facts in this case.

Because you see, Johnny hates this man. I don't know what happened prior to this, but he hates him so much, and it was clear from when they started talking. Rottenborn started by going over the article. He showed a weird newspaper version of the article with a different title, and Johnny pointed out he had never seen this version--only the online version, and that the paper version came out days later. Rottenborn tried to get him to make a legal claim that he can't sue her for the article, which was just odd and they should have objected to that. It's not his job to decide.

See, they're going for the angle that Johnny wasn't specifically named in the article, therefore he should not win this case as a result. Which... I mean, fair. But Johnny rightfully says that the article contains fragments of her claims against him. He pointed out that the article stated "2 years ago, I became the public face for violence against women" and told Rottenborn that it was easy to figure out what she was referring to, "no matter his angle". Depp said he would have to be a simpleton to think that this article had no effect on his career, while Rottenborn is alluding that Disney decided to oust his involvement in Pirates 6 before that.

Rottenborn ended by saying that joint statement I mentioned earlier, he signed off on was admission of him admitting he abused her.

Johnny was losing his cool, clearly, and probably because he was annoyed by having to answer these questions, and probably because he's tired after having to explain the awful things his wife had done to him for 6 hours. It picks up the next day with the cross examination!

DAY 6: Part 2

We're back and Johnny Depp continues his testimony. He says the picture of him with a bruise on his face from a "staircase incident" in which Amber described as Johnny Depp supposedly trying to shove Amber's sister down a flight of stairs and her heroically "hitting him in the face". Thing is, he still had this awful bandage on his hand, and they have a picture of the bruise on his face from this, and he says Amber's sister was between the both of them, so it was not possible for him to be pushing her down any stairs, and that Amber just sucker punched him around her sister. And that Amber's sister got between them, trying to stop Amber.

They play an audio recording from another day in which Amber Heard doesn't remember kicking a bathroom door into his head. It's significant because they keep claiming Johnny doesn't remember anything, when Amber is claiming on the audio recording that she doesn't remember because she was on Ambien and that Johnny needs to stop obsessing about her not remembering stuff. And that she calls him a coward for walking away from an argument constantly and Johnny trying to reason with her about how they need time to cool down during arguments. She also admits on audio recording that she throws pots and pans. "Just because I throw pots and pans does not mean you can knock on the door! They're not the same thing! It doesn't make it right for you to come to my door and knock on it!" Amber is unhinged in these recordings. Just no logic at all. So much emotional manipulation too. And then they play a recording of her saying she hit him, and she doesn't remember how she hit him, but that it was absolutely not a punch, and that she's sorry she didn't hit him with a proper slap instead. And she calls him a baby. She is deranged. He says these audio recordings are the tone of the vast majority of their fights and that he could never get a word in.

The incident with the door, Depp describes, as him taking a shower and her banging on the door repeatedly and he inched the door open, holding it tight because he didn't want her to come in. She tried to force her way in and he kept trying to close it slowly. She yelped in pain and he thought her foot got caught in the door. So he knelt down while the door was not fully closed and she kicked the bathroom door into his head. There was a picture to match. He stood up and said "What the fuck was that?" And she punched him right in the face. Then she lied to someone who came to check on him (owner of the property, I think?).

He recounts another story in which she was beating the shit out of him to the point he had to duck down and shield himself, and he grabbed her in a bearhug to keep her from hitting. She kept trying to kick and knee him and their heads bumped together in the commotion. She screamed that he headbutt her and broke her nose. He reiterates their forehead just bumped together, and he tried telling her he didn't even hit her nose. She ran away for 7-8 minutes and came back with a tissue under her nose and showed it to him with some redness on it. She then said, "Way to go Johnny! You broke my nose!" He asked to check her nose and she refused to let him. He tried to calm her down so she would throw out the tissue, because he didn't believe her, and he dug it out of the trash when she got rid of it, and she just put red nail polish on the tissue to pretend her nose was broken.

Johnny recounted another time where Amber waited until people were gone and threw a mineral spirits bottle at his face, and some staff members had seen it and were shocked. They kept objecting when Depp was trying to explain the staff members were actually shocked. He was stunned for a few minutes before leaving.

"Amber asked the chef what she wanted to eat, but I suppose that's hearsay." lol

On Amber's birthday in 2016, Johnny Depp had a severe financial emergency in which his accountants screwed him out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. He apologized for being late to her party because he had to deal with this, because it affects his children and her as well if he's getting bilked for cash by these shitty accountants. He said he only had one bottle of wine at the meeting. When he arrived, she would occasionally say to him "I can't believe you did this on my birthday" when people weren't able to see. "I'm sure that because I was an hour and forty minutes late that Ms. Heard was well into the wine before I got there." He said when the guests left, she was free to commence her typical dressing down of him, berating him for being late to her birthday party.

He said as he was being screamed at, trying to egg him on into a fight when he was exhausted from the time and stress of dealing with the financial issue, he just went to lay in bed. She followed him to bed as he was trying to read and started to scream at him again, but he ignored her. She went around and got in front of him and started hitting him again. He took her by the arms and sat her down on the bed and said he was leaving. She raced to the doorway and stood in front of it, telling him he couldn't leave. He eventually asked if she wanted to hit him, to go ahead. So she punched him in the face. He asked if she wanted to hit him again, and she did. Then he said she's gotten it out of her system and walked her over to the bed again and left.

He decided then that he wanted to leave the relationship. After that, he left to go take care of his sick mother who was at death's door. At one point he wanted to go get his things since Amber was at Coachella and Joshua Bett, his security guy, told him that wouldn't be a good idea. Amber's attorneys tried to object, but it was rejected. So Johnny said Joshua Bett showed him a photograph with "human fecal matter" on his side of the bed. He said he laughed in disbelief because of how grotesque and bizarre it was.

So he continued to stay and talk in length about his mother passing and having to watch her in that state. He called Amber the day his mother died and told her that he made the decision to leave her, but wasn't going to cite violence or irreconcilable differences or anything. And it would be a release from each other with love and with ownership of their relationship.

This takes us to the day before Amber Heard filed for restraining order, where she claimed to have been hit. He went over to collect some things and have a discussion with her and thought she would understand him if they talked about it. He asked his security to stay by the door, and if they heard anything to enter the penthouse immediately. Eventually, she brought up the poop situation. She tried to blame it on the dogs, but they're teacup yorkies and the poop was bigger than they were. He called the poop a "grumpy" at one point which slayed me. But while he was gathering things, she called one of her friends to laugh and make fun of Johnny for actually thinking it was a human poo and not the dogs, and he had enough because his mother had just died the day before and felt he didn't deserved to be ridiculed like that. He took the phone from Amber and said "You can have her now" to her friend and he tossed the phone aside onto the couch harmlessly.

StealThisSheen posted...

I mean, presumably, yes. A jury is supposed to regard the facts. If the fact is said makeup didn't even exist at the time, that's very hard to ignore. Furthermore, I'd assume said testimony could be thrown out completely by the judge.

All true except for the testimony being thrown out. It takes a lot to find actual impeachment worth throwing out. Depp's lawyers would have to move for it to be stricken, and it's far more useful for them to show she's a liar, since that's what their whole case it based on. Just being able, in closing arguments, point to the concealer kit they used in their opening statement and say "They stood up here and LIED to you about this, like they lied about everything else!" is far more significant.

Lightning Strikes posted...

For a bit of context the English (not UK as each country has different legal systems) libel laws were changed some years ago under the coalition government to make libel harder to prove so that the burden is on the claimant instead of the defendant in the case. This was intended to protect individuals and journalists from huge companies like in the McLibel case, but also lets the gutter press have an easier time. You win some you lose some I suppose.

Thanks for this! It adds a more understanding on the decision on The Sun case.

StealThisSheen posted...

I dunno if this has been discussed, but I saw a video that mentioned that Amber's opening statement specifically stated that she was going to testify that she used a very specific makeup product to conceal bruises, but then the maker of the product came out and stated that said product didn't even exist until after the date that her allegations specify?

Yuuuup.

They might claim it wasn't the same one, but Elaine the really bad attorney, made very clear it was the same exact one and held it in the juror's faces and said that Amber had a process for how common she was bruised that she knew exactly what combination to use for each day of bruising. Which wouldn't be the case if it was a different one.

Also that specific one is in evidence cited as the one she used. So if they try to completely pretend like they never mentioned it, it can be brought up on cross examination by Depp's team. "Oops." Also, Depp's team can also get information directly from the company to present to prove their point and that is information from outside the case so it can be presented as factual information.

TheRock1525 posted...

I'm curious what Amber's defense is gonna be about the finger thing. Just simply claim she didn't do it, or offer some other explanation because apparently the have audio of Amber yelling at him not to cut his finger off which... how can you even confirm that? She could have recorded it any time.

Her story she's given us that he slammed his phone on it. She also claimed he cut it while cutting vegetables. Her telling of that night, from what I've heard, is quite wild.

The recording of her telling him not to cut himself is uh... Well there's a lot of context to that, completely removed of context when played. This was a bit after Amber got the restraining order, which she was begging him to break it and he did, stupidly. Keep in mind this was directly after his mother died, he was being bilked for around $700k from accountants who screwed him over. It was said he was playing that game where you stab the knife between your fingers and she's telling him not to cut himself and that he wanted to commit suicide because he gave a fucking death glare to this attorney when it was played before they left for the weekend.

BUT they want to present it, presumably, as her being a caring wife when she was telling him he needs a sharper knife and getting him a sharper knife.

He also tried to get her to sign a post-nuptial agreement (which lol there ain't no way). He tried to get his lawyers to discuss it with her and dumb it down the legalese. This starts the day his finger was hit. Amber arrived livid, even after a long plane ride back, and told the lawyers that Johnny doesn't know about this agreement, and that there is no way he would agree with it. And she was livid because the one female attorney laughed at her and said "Oh, he knows. Trust me." Amber also leveraged that Johnny didn't have her in his will, when there wasn't even enough time to change it after their marriage yet. She called him an ass kisser to lawyers. He did end up calling the attorneys and told them off for treating Amber like that, but says he regrets it because he didn't believe her after the fact.

After being stressed out of his mind from this, Johnny then went down to the rec room he has and grabbed hvodka and a shot glass and started screaming at him about drinking and grabbed his bottle of vodka and it whizzed right past his head and smashed on the wall behind him. He then got another vodka bottle as she's screaming at him, and his arm was hanging on the edge of the bar with his fingers dangling off the edge. She then grabbed a bigger bottle and threw it at his hand. Depp said he didn't feel pain at first, but then he looked down and the tip of his finger was blown off, and he said his finger was spurting blood like Vesuvius.

He said he just had some kind of nervous breakdown after that, and he described it as being in disbelief that this was actually life. He described his manic breakdown and said he was writing out lies that she had told him on the walls with his blood, and when he ran out of blood, he put his blown off finger in a can of paint and used that which is horrifying to think about how much more that would make it hurt. He says he doesn't recall Amber's reaction, just that he heard a high pitched voice screaming and white noise. He texted Dr. Kippur after he finally calmed down to tell him to come over since he cut his finger. He says he lied about Amber having blown his finger off to keep her out of trouble. They also showed a picture of his finger and it absolutely could not have come from a cut or anything. It was absolutely blown apart. Just awful. He also brought up that she stomped out a cigarette on his face after he had his finger blown off, with a gnarly picture of his cheek in the surgery room to prove it.

He mentioned to the surgeon he got it stuck in a folding door and said the surgeon looked at him like he was absurd and said "Sir, this is a wound of velocity." So when I say the tip of his finger, I'm talking about the underside of it, where the finger prints would be. It was absolutely hollowed out and they had to do a skin graft on it using skin from the palm of his hand. He specifically requested a pink bandage with hearts on it and showed a picture of him showing it off/giving the camera the bird. Matches with his sense of humor through this awful injury. He said he had that giant bandage on for the rest of the filming of Pirates 5. He also had a MURSA infection on his finger too. He took no opiates or roxycodone during this time.

DAY 6: Part 1

Johnny Depp's testimony continues! A note is that I learned Johnny has ADHD and that probably explains why he's a bit rambling.

He recounts the boot incident again and says that was the start of the more aggressive way she spoke to him. He said certain things came up and then he was suddenly wrong about everything, including things about acting in which he had been in the industry for decades. She was also unable to be wrong and would send digs and insults his way constantly. He said at first he stood up for himself, and then he stopped because he knew he could never win. He said he would remove himself from the situation as he did when he was young and reiterated that. He also said he did not want to fail in the relationship, like his father told him that he felt after leaving his mother, and that Amber had threatened suicide many times during arguments if he left, which reminded him of his mother's suicide attempt after his father left.

Depp also stated he took great pride in being a good father and that it was his one truest ambition, and that it was one thing Amber would say to set him off is "You're a terrible father" and repeat it over and over.

He mentioned her screaming and crying to him when he was able to actually leave in front of the penthouse security as he was on the elevator, he would drive a far distance away to his other home, and then she would show in a nightgown after screaming outside for him.

Johnny also said she lied about things she would say and do constantly the day after. Because of that, he would record her but ask for permission so he could play back things she said and did. However, Amber would always record him in secret.

He mentioned Amber would often get mad at him for drinking, which he never understood because he never drank excessively. He said Amber would be drinking far, far more. And that he said that he stopped drinking for 18 months and he would ask her to stop drinking too to help his own sobriety and it would start another huge fight because she claimed she never had a problem. He remarked once he had a small glass of champagne during a celebration for Christopher Lee because photographers were there. He said he told Amber at dinner after that and she lost her mind on him.

"Let me ask you another question Mr. Depp." "Yes, so he can object to another one."

She hated that he got the WINONA FOREVER tattoo on him (for Winona Ryder, his close friend and former girlfriend). He felt it was very important to him, like all of his tattoos, but he did get it changed so she would stop and had it changed to WINO FOREVER as a joke since it hurt to get it changed and as he's stated, he used jokes to deal with pain.

He said he was working 17-20 hour days for Black Mass and he got addicted to Roxicodone as a result. He detailed how awful the withdrawals were. And he brought up the infamous plane ride he supposedly blacked out and kicked her, but he said he never blacked out, he was just sleeping because of how many hours he was working. He detailed that flight where he she was just constantly trying to argue with him as he ignore it and sleep. And then eventually he grabbed a pillow and retreated to the bathroom and slept in there.

He then talked about his detox experience. His sister was supposed to stay with him while he was detoxing, but instead she switched with Amber instead and he said he was very uncomfortable with her being the one to help him during it. He didn't want to get into arguments when he'd be completely miserable on a detox and that it would just be far more difficult. He also said that while he was trying to detox, she was still drinking heavily and doing drugs right in front of him. I've never had to detox from a drug addiction but it sounds like the worst thing ever. Amber had told the doctor and nurse she would administer the meds to help with detox. Depp said he was literally begging her for the meds, which you're supposed to take if the pain is absolutely unbearable, while he body was in complete agony and she would tell him that it wasn't the time. He tried to explain to her it wasn't about clocks, it was about when his body needed it. He said he had a scalding hot shower to trick his body into focusing on the pain from burning his skin when she refused to give him the meds.

He then told his nurse and doctor about what happened and said she couldn't be around during his detox because she just wasn't administering it properly and they understood. Johnny asked Amber to please give him time to recover away from him while he dealt with it, and she accused him of trying to throw her out and not giving her credit for getting him as far as he has with the detox. He bought a place for the week for her and her friends to have a great time at and she reluctantly agreed to leave him alone for the rest of the detox, which went far more smoothly.

He would then talk about how Amber was rushing the wedding and accusing him of not believing in them when he tried to get a pre-nuptial agreement, and she would just lose it each time he asked about a pre-nup. Not many people went to Johnny and Amber's wedding from Johnny's side. He had his son as his best man, and his daughter didn't show up because she and Amber were on awful terms. Skipping forward, he said neither of his children wanted to ever be around Amber because "My children are far smarter than I am." This wedding is fucking wild. They had a schedule sent out for when they would take drugs to party. He said he never did party drugs or drank alcohol and was just smoking weed.

Team Rocket Elite posted...

Are there a lot of different types of objections?

Aside from the ones mentioned here... sorta. lol

Major ones being used in this trial are:

Hearsay: Nobody actually has the most solid interpretation of this one because it's so up for interpretation and preference of the parties and the judge, but more or less this objects to someone telling second-hand information. It's more complicated than that.

Lack of Foundation: Objecting to not enough information being laid to show background/knowledge of whatever they want to discuss. These have been absurd in this trial.

Compound: Objecting because they have asked multiple questions in their one question. Ex: "Is this water blue, wet, and has it melted a wicked witch?" You have to break them up. It's been used by Rottenborn being incredibly frustrated trying to break Johnny Depp.

Asked & Answered: You ask a question that you more or less answer within the question as well. "Do you remember when you beat your wife?" You're trying a tricky question to get them to admit to something.

Leading: You ask a question that is leading them to a conclusion. Ex: "The color of this pen was blue, right?" Instead of "What color was the pen?"

Relevance: You ask a question that doesn't seem relevant to the case. Like asking Johnny Depp what car he drives, when it has no real purpose whatsoever.

Speculation: You ask the witness to guess; they should only say what they actually know as a fact to what they saw/hear/etc. Usually used when guessing people's reasons for doing something.

Other common ones are:

Prejudicial: You ask a question that is irrelevant and meant to defame their character. Example from this trial actually: Them bringing up another lawsuit Johnny Depp was in in which he is being sued for punching someone on set. It has nothing to do with this case and shouldn't factor in to this case (but they keep trying to get it in).

Argumentative: Arguing with a client until they give you an answer and basically berating them until they answer how they want. Also known as badgering a witness.

Vague: You just asked a shitty question so open-ended it can't be answered.

Non-Responsive: You use this against the witness, actually, where the witness seems to refuse to answer your question and answers a different question. Usually as a last resort to them evading your question.

There is your objection primer!

BlueCrystalTear posted...

This is a problem... why? My guess is that they're just trying to rattle him because they recognize they have no case. Amber's lawyers are only sabotaging their own character by objecting with "That... was... objectionable!"

Typically you can't just let a witness ramble on forever. They have to ask questions. They gave Johnny A LOT of leeway here if we're being honest, likely because they don't want to look like assholes for interrupting him while he's spilling his heart out.

I can't remember the type of objection that would be but it's a fair one.

And then he explained why his texts are absolutely fucking insane, is because he idolized Hunter S. Thompson, famed writer, with whom he became incredibly close with. (See: Fear & Loathing In Los Vegas & Rum Diary) He said when he was stressed he wanted to create, and his creating manifests into speaking in a expressive way and using dark humor. This makes complete sense looking at his angry texts, as well as his happy ones. They're all wild. "Pain has to be dealt with humor." He reiterated he was a fan of Monty Python. He explained that he regrets what he said in a lot of his texts, and seeing them written out and looking back at them that he was able to reflect on how awful they were. He felt so out of his mind in many situations and not sure how to explain them, which is why they sounded so off the wall.

Depp said his drug abuse started as a child because his mom told him to get her nerve pills, citing that they were meant to make her calm down. And he started taking pills at age 11 and said he did most drugs by age 15. He said he takes drugs a lot in the present to deal with a lot of his childhood trauma and keep calm. He said he never took uppers, he only took downers, to dispute the claim that he was a drugged up, high maniac. He said that he used to be teased after drinking or doing drugs because nobody could tell if he was high or anything. He expressed the only thing he was addicted to was Roxicodone, which is an opiate. He said he wasn't taking the pills when he was addicted to get high, he was taking them to get better because of the withdrawals. Said this lasted 4-5 years.

He discussed working on his first movie with Amber, The Rum Diary, which was his own personal project he tried to get made because of his adoration for Hunter S. Thompson. He detailed a little bit more about that.

And then he talked about building a little group of people living in his penthouses, mostly just giving Amber's sister and friends places to live for free. And that was it!

DAY 5

We start with the cross-examination of Joshua Betts, who was Johnny Depp's security guard. They basically just try to impeach his character with such little lies that it didn't feel all too effective. Depp's team did surprisingly well on objecting this time. Frankly, there wasn't much here. Heard's team just wanted to present that he was bias, which sure. Why wouldn't he be?

Next up was the testimony of Keenan Wyatt, who was a close friend of Johnny's and a personal sound technician for his films, and other ones. He worked on Pirates 5 with Johnny and established he was late because of arguments with Amber. The objections were absurd from Heard's team for this one. They used him to dispel this idea that Johnny was difficult to work with and that his injury ruined the filming, when he said they just sort of worked around it after a few weeks of delay. Interestingly, Wyatt plays music when Johnny is acting into an earpiece for him to get him in the mood. He's a unique actor like that. Apparently Johnny would go into make-up in the morning and re-write a lot of his lines and Wyatt would remind him of his lines since he didn't have much time to memorize the new lines. He talked him up as being a delight to work with for everyone around.

He described Johnny's sense of humor as dark, British humor like Monty Python, clearly to infer that the wild texts he sent that are dark have to do with that. He also went on vacation with him multiple times. But he also said Johnny Depp never abused or raised his voice to Amber or his previous wife or his children.

He was on that airplane ride where Johnny supposedly kicked Amber. He witnessed literally the whole thing and said there was no violence, which is also notable since he was facing them the whole time. At one point in a break with them fighting, Wyatt went up to Amber to try and make her feel better and she went off on him "How dare you talk to me?", prompting Johnny to tell him that she can't talk to Wyatt like that (it's a common trend that he tends to defend people from her rage). He also said Johnny wasn't drunk at all on the plane.

Elaine, the awful lawyer, does the cross examination on Wyatt, and she tried to get him to comment on his contracts which is outrageous. She tried to paint it as Wyatt lost jobs because Johnny wasn't getting work, which is absurd. She did an awful job trying to show his bias. He also saw Johnny talking to Sean Bailey, the director for Pirates 5, about doing future projects. Elaine got really, really shitty with this dude over him saying that Sean Bailey had worked with Depp for a Pirates 5 promotion at Disney Land. She basically tried to use him to proving Depp was already kicked from Disney before Amber Heard's accusations. The Judge let in too many questions after they were objected to and it just made her seem stupid. Re-cross with Depp's lawyers they just asked if he had more work on movies without Depp on them and he said yeah, so her entire cross was worthless.

Next up was the start of Johnny Depp's testimony!

He started off a bit nervous (who knows if it was acting) but then spoke more confidently. He seemed shy and trying to speak more colorfully about the awful things in his life, established from stories from his terrible childhood and through the rest of everything with Heard, so it comes across as believable. He also does a lot of smiling when he's nervous or trying to ponder a way to phrase things in a less awful manner.

He started off explaining the basis for the case and that he wanted to stand up for himself and his children and because things blew way out of proportion and wanted to clear his name and stop his children from having to hear about these lies Amber spread, and for those who he had given advice and had good times with to feel like they weren't lied to and that he wasn't a fraud.

He detailed his childhood and how his mother was incredibly abusive to them and his father, who was often screamed at and put down. He said his father would just take it. And that he would hit things to deal with it but never hit her, and he would most times try to walk away from the confrontations. He detailed the abuse his mother gave him and talked about how cruel she was, insulting any physical issues people had and just hitting him with whatever was handy. It's really rough.

He also commented on how his father left his mother one day, and he went to him and his father told him that he was the man now, and that it was up to him, and Johnny came back home and watched his mother pass out and almost die from attempted suicide with pills. His father also mentioned telling Johnny that he feels like he failed by leaving the relationship.

They objected at one point because Depp's team just wasn't asking questions and he just was allowed to have long monologues.

He also discussed how he knew how to raise children by doing the absolute opposite of his mother, and discussed his parenting philosophy to be gentle and kind, more or less.

They would then talk about Amber, who he described as smart, funny, understanding, and literate. He said the beginning of their relationship was amazing. And he said the first time he felt something was off was because she would take off his boots every day, and one day he took off his boots because she was busy and she got really upset and told him that taking off his boots is her job, and he does not do that.

He then went back to talk about how he was a musician in a band and Nicholas Cage of all people got him hooked up with his agent to audition for A Nightmare On Elm Street. He said he didn't take acting very seriously until he decided to make it his career, then he went in obsessively, talking about Captain Jack Sparrow and his creative process for that. It was pretty fascinating.

He said after the first Pirates movie his life changed in a huge way and he couldn't do anything as simple as going to get a cup of coffee anymore without being swarmed by people, talking about how hard it was to transition to that and how he's never gotten used to it. He says saying his own name is weird because it feels like promoting a product.

When you claim to always be carrying around a specific cosmetic concealer kit to hide your bruises during an entire relationship and the cosmetic company says "No fuck you, we didn't release this until you were broken up."

https://twitter.com/tasteofsanity/status/1517325335691472899?t=PkH70UG_bwMyYr3yBcBWaQ&s=19

Like let me be clear. That was the SECOND vodka bottle she threw at Johnny during that. He said he felt the first one whiz past his head when he wasn't looking and ducked out of instinct.

That first one could have killed him, dead. And she's incredibly fortunate that it didn't.

And even if you somehow convince someone "Okay, he did cut off his own finger." How do you explain away her putting out a cigarette into his face after that, which is a completely deliberate act?

TheRock1525 posted...

So reading up on it, Depp never went to the police, instead going to his doctor and saying that he cut himself. Which would still line up with his claim that he lied to protect Amber at the time, but obviously muddies things.

Yeah, he wouldn't tell his doctors or nurses it was Amber because he didn't want her to get in trouble which... I mean, if you love someone that checks. It hits pretty close to my situation.

However, they showed a picture of the injured finger. His finger was literally blown off to the bone. You could see the actual bone sticking out. His claim he cut himself while cutting vegetables or the other claim he got it caught in a sliding door just cannot do that sort of thing.

He mentioned he told the surgeon he cut it and the surgeon said "Sir, this is an injury of velocity, not of a slice." It was thrown out for hearsay which they didn't fight to keep in, but the jury heard it.

The vodka bottle story is the only one that makes sense here.

A few things about Amber's "evidence" of abuse.

In the UK trial, she had nothing. All of her stories of abuse are contradicted, and she has changed what has happened in multiple of them.

When she claims to have been beaten or abused, nobody can recall seeing her bruised, marked up, or swollen. And she's had appearances literally the day after she said she had a busted nose or busted lip and she's on TV looking perfectly fine.

To that effect, none of her friends who she saw constantly and confided with are set to be witnesses for her. And if they could corroborate with what Amber said, they would be. Only her sister is a witness of the people who were closest to her.

They have had Johnny Depp on cross-examination for over a day and they haven't provided a shred of evidence that he's ever struck her or admitted to striking her.

She claimed to have pictures and images of her bruises and marks from being hit on her phone, absolutely refused to produce her phone and those images for such a long time and they had to do multiple Motions to Compel to get them, and then eventually produced doctored images with the metadata wiped.

I'm saying there is next to nothing they have to prove abuse, whereas there is plenty of Johnny being able to produce he was abused. I frankly don't foresee them coming up with anything at this point if they couldn't on cross-examination yet. I just don't see it being mutual at all here.

CassandraCain posted...

Saw this in another topic about the case, could be appreciated here.

https://twitter.com/mculokii/status/1517264786290974720?s=20&t=4CUJ7r7Nz2U80ka4BRWgWg

Yeah, the whole thing has basically been this.

From the moment cross-examination began it was clear that Johnny Depp did not like Rottenborn at all, for good reason.

A little more context for a few things:

- It is absolutely impossible to follow any sort of timeline. So when Johnny said he could feel them jumping into the future, it was because he has gone from 2013 to 2016 to 2014 to 2013 etc. It's really sloppy and difficult to follow, likely on purpose.
- This is the most disorganized presentation of exhibits. They are CONSTANTLY having to look for exhibits and spend upwards of 5 minutes dealing with redactions that should have been dealt with. It's pretty frustrating.
- The sloppy evidence is because it has been a complete battle to get discovery of evidence out from Amber's side with an outrageous number of motions forcing Amber to give up documents or her phone among other things.
- He asks if he read that right just to have a question because you have to accompany evidence with a question. A few he did NOT read it right and Johnny would say no and correct him, even if it was as small as a punctuation mark.
- It's crazy to me he's not having Johnny read the more heinous texts to have his voice saying them. He had him do it once and then they argued over who would read the next one. I think Rottenborn just wants to seem like he's in charge.
- This isn't even touching the surface of the banter that Johnny has delivered to this guy yesterday. You can probably make a 10 minute cut of it honestly.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Not that I dont think shes an abuser, I do because of the recordings, but when youre sharing clips of her kinda half-smiling after a quiet discussion you cant hear and then going back to frowning and calling it disgusting, I think youve lost the plot.

Tony, I clearly showed it as an example of how quickly she is turning the faces off and on.

You are free to watch it for yourself for the many times she's smirked and made smug faces while it's being recounted the awful things she's done to Johnny Depp.

My point is that it's an imperfect system regardless.

Furthermore, the Judge is there to make the trial fair with additional knowledge they possess about the entire case in general. For instance, in this case Amber Heard's team has been very shifty with the evidence, messing with meta data, among other things. That can color the Judge's opinion of the facts of the case. And they're constantly trying to sneak in information they shouldn't, and the Judge is there to make sure that inadmissable information is not a factor.

That's why it's presented to as neutral of people as possible. So that they can get a scope of ONLY the facts of the case and deliberate on a decision together. And as has been discussed, they have the opportunity to eliminate most of the absolute nutters on a jury so that weird person who decided on auras is usually not factored in. AND they are clearly told what to judge things on as well with instructions.

I can understand where you're coming from, really. It can never be a perfect system, but it's crafted in a way to make it as fair as it possibly can.

Mr Lasastryke posted...

the system can't function because it's fundamentally broken.

just because you're a reasonable person doesn't mean you're able to accurately gauge a lawsuit.

Who do you expect to gauge the law then? If you say Judges, they are just informed, but also imperfect people. They get things wrong constantly and some of them are just outright terrible.

banananor posted...

This was in Brooklyn! Don't remember the specific court, but it was a criminal trial

I was a bit young at the time, so didn't have the forcefulness to get them to cave, which in retrospect they would have

They were being really weird about other stuff, too. They didnt want to give us a printed or written definition of the law under question (metrics for self defense, duty to retreat, etc) to bring into the jury room, so we had to go out and get it repeated. such a waste of time

I could rant. I lost some respect for our justice system through the overall process of experiencing that trial!

Oh that is just weird. My understanding is most courts will at least give you the definition of the law in your jury instructions. This is just strange. But every court is very, very different, a lot of times in stupid ways.

KamikazePotato posted...

Imagine being so messed up you can't stop smirking during testimony of the stuff you did

Here's one example I ran into, probably the best one to show her switching it off and on. But usually she just turns her head, puts her hand in front of her mouth, and you can tell she's trying not to just outright laugh.

https://twitter.com/Thesunnymango/status/1516951020546502661?s=20&t=16jlXp6vFS8bhQok9Zfbmw

Aecioo posted...

honestly, if you end up on a jury you're probably an idiot

or you're someone like biscuit who is fascinated by this stuff

but probably 99% are idiots who aren't smart enough to get out of jury duty

Yo, even if I love this stuff, I would NOT want to be on a jury. It is actually the worst. I don't even want to attend a trial for my job dude, and I keep missing them like arrows whizzing past my head at this point, so it's bound to happen soon. I've been watching this trial while I work. Imagine sitting in a jury having to listen to some asshole try to point at Johnny Depp and say "He did drugs. He bad." for 5 hours straight. Just miserable.

swordz9 posted...

WB having a grand time with shit Heard and arrested again Ezra Miller lol

In Hawaii, you have a better chance of getting attacked by Ezra Miller than being attacked by a shark.

And as a bonus, I'll link that Isaac Barusch testimony where he broke down on the stand about how bullshit it is that Amber lied.

https://youtu.be/FcmUNlgld74

Team Rocket Elite posted...

Is there a reason for this? I would have thought he had the money for the best of the best when it came to lawyers.

So money does not equal quality with a lawyer.

It's a lot to do with marketing. If you can market yourself well and have a few good cases, then you can present yourself as a quality attorney, even if you aren't. One example of this is the title Super Lawyer, which sounds very fancy and good, but in all honesty if you litigate one big class action case to reach the dollar threshold, you can advertise yourself as a bar-recognized Super Lawyer. This doesn't mean you're good at all--it could mean you just had an easy case and litigated it well. But that's just one part.

Another part is that civil lawyers honestly don't go to many trials if they can help it. The number one goal is to get a case settled before it ever goes to trial because trials suuuuuuuuck. You could have minimal trial experience and have been an attorney for decades. It's just how it goes sometimes. And having that experience is hard. Well over 95% of cases are dismissed or settled before trial.

Concerning why they suck at addressing objections, I don't know why, really. They just kind of stammer through their explanation because the objections are kind of nonsense. For example, they say lack of foundation for foundational questions and it's like... that's the foundation, to set the stage for another question. The Judge is just granting them because the attorney can't explain why. Or there's some hearsay and they can't answer fast enough why it's not hearsay--that they directly heard it or anything like that. And they just didn't improve.

To their credit though, during the cross-examination, they have figured out that if they do a sidebar and have both parties go up to the Judge and explain it, they have far more success with more than a split second to explain, so Depp's lawyers ARE learning.

And Amber Heard's one lawyer, Rottenborn, isn't bad, as much as I may be dunking on him. He's been given an impossibly hard case to defend Heard and attack Depp, and he's likely being given orders from Amber Heard who, as we've discovered, is a deeply unwell person with a hair trigger. This isn't her first set of attorneys either. She ran off another group of attorneys before this.

DAY 4

We continue with Dr. Kippur, who would die before saying a single thing about his client. In case it wasn't clear, they basically got their entire testimony through his doctor's notes and his oddly personal texts with Johnny. And I guess I should explain why he's shutting his fucking mouth.

1) He wants to be hired by some celebrity with entirely too much money again and if he can keep secrets then he'll be a great boon.
2) He doesn't want to say the wrong thing and get looked into for medical malpractice.

This was still very, very boring. But he reiterated that it would be extremely difficult for his nurses to not report any injuries to Amber Heard, and they would be obligated to tell him about it. Honestly, there wasn't much in the remainder of this testimony. Just presenting the medical facts of everything.

Next up is another video testimony with Nurse Debbie, who was assigned to Johnny Depp. Like Dr. Kippur before her, and for the reasons stated, if you put a gun to this woman's head she wouldn't give you an answer that wasn't "I don't recall." Which is fine, because they just wanted her records in.

Johnny Depp was so outrageously nice to this girl in all of their text messages and he would joke around with her a lot. She said she was going to cry at one point reviewing the texts because of how sweet they were. My favorite was when he was asking for "knock out yum-yums" and saying "I love that weird fucker!!!" about Dr. Kippur. Most notably, she was monitoring his attempt to detox off of pain drugs. And he texted her absolutely begging her for something else to numb the feeling because he could not stand Amber anymore while he was trying to detox.

She also verifies, yet again, Amber never had any marks on her during this time when she claimed that she was held hostage and savagely beaten for 3 days. She also put in her notes that Amber seemed to be giving Johnny a hard time, or something to that effect, and making it more difficult for him when he was trying to detox because Amber was giving him no support.

A running theme is that Amber blamed Johnny's pill addictions on their problems, and he largely wanted to kick it as a result. And she made it clear in her notes and texts that Johnny was saying as much, but that he was afraid of having to deal with her without the drugs. It feels like she was his rock through this time, and they talked through things a lot. The nurse constantly mentions in her notes about Amber arguing or putting down Johnny's ability to detox and her having to reassure him. It's overwhelming how many notes there are about Amber making it hard for Johnny to detox. It really feels like as time went on she got more and more fed up with Amber's shit, as she outright mentions in her notes that Johnny felt like he was in a "no-win situation" with her and that he felt like "he can't do anything right with her".

She also brought up a plane ride that gets mentioned a lot, in which Johnny supposedly kicked Amber on it. A running trend of witnesses starting with her say that Johnny was trying not to engage with Amber and Amber was constantly egging him on, but she just remembers them arguing but no violence.

Another notable thing was that Amber grew resentful of Nurse Debbie being around, according to other people, and that Amber was always only nice to her face.

Oh, and for @Aecioo and @Team_Rocket_Elite , a picture of Amber Heard's hairstyle where I said she was blocking her view from the jury.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/5/5/AATFBfAADKIz.jpg

Mercifully, we get an in-person testimony again with Johnny Depp's personal security, Joshua Bett. He was formerly a cop, which shows because the man was an excellent witness and was pretty perfect. Most notably because when there was an objection, he would make sure the important bit got out anyway and play dumb when the Judge told him he has to stop after an objection. This was where the objections became really ridiculous though, and the Judge kept granting them anyway because Depp's lawyers suck at explaining why the objections weren't valid.

He testified that Johnny and Amber argued. A lot. He also confirmed that Amber would throw things at Johnny. He did say he never saw them hit each other though. He also affirmed he never saw a bruise, mark, or anything on Amber.

Important was that it was Bett that told Johnny that they need to take pictures of his injuries that Amber Heard would inflict on him "just incase". This was how they got a lot of pictures in of Johnny having bruises and cuts on him.

He also testified to the last night Johnny and Amber were together, which was the day before she filed for a restraining order. Johnny told Bett to stay by the door and to come in if they heard anything. This was all important because he testified no damage to the apartment (when Amber claims there was a lot of it) and that when they entered Amber shrieked "You won't ever do this to me again Johnny!" or something along those lines while Johnny was like 20 feet away from her. He also testified he saw no marks or bruises on Amber in that time.

And that's it for that day. Cross-examination of Bett will kick off the next day.

TheRock1525 posted...

I have no idea why they moved forward with shooting Aquaman 2 with Heard still in it.

A little bit about Amber Heard and Jason Momoa.

She claimed that she would be reading on set and every day Jason Momoa would come up and tear out a page of her book for attention. I frankly don't know how true that is anymore.

But worth noting that literally today, Jason Momoa followed Johnny Depp on Instagram. So I would assume Jason Momoa is also not a fan of Amber Heard.

Really? That's very strange! What court was it at?

Oh hey, scoops from an independent journalist who has been covering it!

• The people in the court are majority Johnny Depp supporters, she says, after talking with most of them. She said she only talked to one Amber supporter.
• The jury has 1 person who is writing notes like a mad person. One juror always looks shocked. And another seems bored. But the rest seem extremely engaged. One seems to not love the pretty raunchy texts from Johnny.
• Johnny Depp is making everyone in the court room laugh and a lot of people seem to be connecting with him (which makes sense if it's majority Depp supporters). Specifically, they seem to be laughing when he's giving barbs back at Amber Heard's lawyer, Rottenborn.
• Amber Heard was overheard telling her lawyer that she doesn't like that people are laughing at things Johnny said.
• The jury was likely told not to laugh or anything, because they have been holding back laughter a lot.
• The jury is about even in terms of gender. There's a lot of younger people on it, and some middle aged people. Nobody too old, it seems like.
• The jury and anyone else in attendance HATE the video testimonies, which makes sense.
• They jury was completely engaged with the Johnny testimony, but have not been nearly as engaged during the cross-examination.

Team Rocket Elite posted...

Like you are mentioning how people are dressed at the trial which gives me the impression that it matters when it really shouldn't.

I mean, it usually matters. It's not a deal breaker, but it's a little thing. That's why if you get a decent lawyer, they tell you to dress up, even if it's something small. A presentation helps. And... hell, maybe I'll just go ahead and talk about it more.

Johnny Depp, for instance, ended up tying his hair back this whole week, which should be evidence enough they're considering this sort of thing.

Amber Heard this week has been dressing in a lot less militant way. Her hair has been down now. On the days of testimony with other people, she had her hair covering the one side of her face facing the jury because she's been seen smirking and stuff when she shouldn't be. On the days of Johnny's testimony, she's been wearing minimal make-up and looking directly at him the whole time, when she hadn't really with other testimonies, so she could make boo boo faces and look more like she was less... I guess, put together and more homely?

And even then, when he talked about awful things she did, she would look away from him and cover her mouth a little bit, clearly with a smug look on her face, then look back. There's a few clips online of her turning it off and on and it's pretty jarring.

There's also a rumor that she's trying to match Johnny's outfits from the previous day to get into his head and be petty, and I thought it was mostly absurd. He started wearing some rather bomb ass reading glasses yesterday though, and she showed up today with reading glasses that look really strangely similar. So I dunno how much there is to that.

Point is, you want the jury to draw subliminal conclusions based on how you look and act. In any trial, really. Because like I said, juries are lizard-brained people who have gone on record going from evaluating the evidence closely to saying "I didn't like his aura." Any little bit helps, even if it seems insignificant like this.