Board 8 > Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard Trial

(+) Yeah! (+)

Just so people can understand further why I'm thinking Amber is just going to be destroyed of any and all credibility when she presents her case, she's just going to be asked questions like these when she made statements under oath in the UK court. She literally can't get out of it.

She tells the truth and then it's "why did you lie before?"

She sticks with the lie and then it's "why are there these pictures of you without a single cut on you when you woke up covered in glass, and why did Starling who was with you all weekend and helping you when you were sick not see any cuts on you from waking up covered in glass?"

Or she comes up with another lie, and then they point to her UK statement and then the pictures and Starling testimony again.

It's just insane lies like these she just made up that any jury is going to look at her and be like "You are a lying liar that lies and we should not believe a thing you say."

https://twitter.com/VincentLaGuard3/status/1520392067465293824?t=w_biSBXbA7dt850xQ-3Mfw&s=19

Jesus Amber's case was just assassinated by this 50 year Hollywood deal making expert.

Working on getting a summary up later tonight, but for now some reading to hold you over. Some other sources have confirmed it as well.

https://nypost.com/2022/05/01/amber-heard-fires-pr-team-days-before-shes-set-to-testify-after-tons-of-bad-press/

i wonder what the decision making is like for these PR firms when approached by someone like Heard here.

Is there any kinds of thoughts of "how can I possibly turn this around? there's no way" or "the facts are so bad for her right now there's no turning this around, I"LL look bad for being attached to this / not succeeding" and then not taking the job, or is it just an automatic "hell yes this is gonna be super lucrative and in the public eye, there's no way to win but whatevs im in"

or do they truly believe they can pull this one off

Harder the case the more you charge.

I treat the New York Post with the same level of seriousness that I do The Onion. It's occasionally good for a laugh, but unlike The Onion... they're actually trying to be serious instead of satirical.

That said, I don't think any PR team is gonna pick up Amber Heard. There's been so much negative press covfefe that her image is irrecoverable. Final verdict doesn't matter. We have recordings. We have contradictions. We have proven lies. We have a slew of witnesses saying that she's a liar. All signs report to Depp being the victim and Heard the abuser.

If a PR hotshot manages to turn her image around... they're gonna be in high demand, and then Amber Heard won't be able to afford them anymore, and her image will go tumbling backward when she's in the news again.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

I treat the New York Post with the same level of seriousness that I do The Onion. It's occasionally good for a laugh, but unlike The Onion... they're actually trying to be serious instead of satirical.

That said, I don't think any PR team is gonna pick up Amber Heard. There's been so much negative press covfefe that her image is irrecoverable. Final verdict doesn't matter. We have recordings. We have contradictions. We have proven lies. We have a slew of witnesses saying that she's a liar. All signs report to Depp being the victim and Heard the abuser.

If a PR hotshot manages to turn her image around... they're gonna be in high demand, and then Amber Heard won't be able to afford them anymore, and her image will go tumbling backward when she's in the news again.

lol

CoolCly posted...

i wonder what the decision making is like for these PR firms when approached by someone like Heard here.

Is there any kinds of thoughts of "how can I possibly turn this around? there's no way" or "the facts are so bad for her right now there's no turning this around, I"LL look bad for being attached to this / not succeeding" and then not taking the job, or is it just an automatic "hell yes this is gonna be super lucrative and in the public eye, there's no way to win but whatevs im in"

or do they truly believe they can pull this one off

They were very successful at controlling the narrative because the UK trial wasn't televised. Now, it's all televised and everyone can more readily hear about everything Johnny says happened and then compare it to Amber's previous stories in which she's just lied about everything pretty clearly.

It's New York Post, which is kind of a rag, but a few other sources seem to have confirmed this too. It wouldn't shock me since a "source" (Eve Barlow) living with Amber during the trial recently informed them of her routine that included studying for trial (which is weird because why does she need to study if she's just going to talk about what happened?) and then trying to villainize Johnny because the "source" said that Amber feels dehumanized because her ex-husband (who she claims abused her on the daily) is ignoring her in court.

It wouldn't surprise me though. I just think the genie is out of the bottle and I think her testimony, which is probably on Wednesday, is just going to open up even more criticism.

DAY 12

We're back in it... and Johnny Depp's case in chief still did not end. I'm stunned he still has more. Overall, it was a mixed bag for Depp's team if I'm honest.

The first witness was via Zoom with Travis McGivern, a gloriously bearded man who was security for Johnny. He discussed that Amber once went off on him about him getting between arguments when she started getting violent to protect Johnny and she told him off and belittled him and said he should imagine what it's like when people but into your relationship and he said he sympathized with that a bit.

He said they didn't start arguing really bad until after Australia, which is when Amber blew off Johnny's finger. He said she had no injuries or marks on her after that. He talked about how she's done everything in her power to keep Johnny from walking away including keeping an elevator open and refusing to let go of his arm. He also said that he has seen her throw stuff at him in the past.

He was a witness to the Staircase Incident, where Amber punched Johnny because supposedly he was going to shove Whitney, Amber's sister, down the stairs. She threw a full can of Redbull at Johnny during an argument and tried to get him to leave when Whitney forced Amber out. Instead, Johnny was starting to throw her clothes off the balcony. (He mentioned they had two bedrooms they converted into closets for Amber what the fuck rich people shit.) He said Amber came back and spit at him and threw more stuff at him. They were insulting each other, specifically Amber called him a deadbeat dad. "The f word is my favorite word, and the amount it was used made me feel uncomfortable."

So Amber's story is that Whitney got between them on the staircase, but Travis said that he was the one who got between the two and that Amber threw the punch past him, not past Whitney. He affirmed this on cross. Amber's face during this part... I think she's finally cracking under the pressure of it all. He said they were shocked. He took Johnny away and said it was no longer up to him to stick around, since he let him be hit by a can of Redbull and punched by Amber. I guess Johnny went to the bathroom and he went up to Travis and got in his face and yelled "That was your fault!" pointing to his shiner. Travis said "I mean, it was, really." He said Johnny didn't throw anything at Amber or get violent at all with her.

He affirmed that the Birthday situation, Amber had thrown Johnny's stuff out the window and he was the one who got him out of there. He also said Amber had no injuries then. He also said he saw her grab him, push him, throw things at him, among other physical acts.

Rottenborn came up during cross doing his typical minor impeachments that mean nothing and I'm just so tired of them at this point so I imagine that the jury has to be so tired of them too. He was like "Okay but he was grabbing hold of Amber's hair and trying to beat her with the cast, right!?" and "He pushed and attacked Whitney, right!?" And he just went "Uh, no that is not correct." And they just... move past it. No follow up questions. It's just bizarre. Nobody on the jury could possibly buy it. They didn't even bother to re-direct.

Next up is another Zoom witness, Jack Whigham who is Johnny's current manager representative. For obvious reasons, they did NOT want his testimony in and Elaine was doing the most nonsense objections ever repeatedly that it was just drawing more attention to the jury of his devastating testimony. She even was outright lying about what the witness was saying in a couple objections. Elaine is sooooo bad. I don't understand it.

He was basically able to specifically testify to the amount of work Johnny could get before Amber's op-ed and then after. He talked about how he was in talks with Pirates 6, and that they were discussing having $22.5 million for Johnny acting in the movie. He asked what role he would play and Elaine objected for speculation. Hilarious. What role do you think he'll play in Pirates 6? He confirmed it was just about a done deal before the op-ed and then they put out a statement 2 days later stating that it was being pulled. He said he tried to get it secured for Johnny after that but was unsuccessful. This is huge because it proves damages entirely. And it also proves that Pirates 6 was all but confirmed before the op-ed. Minamata, a movie Johnny was putting together at the time, lost most of its funding and they had to tear away the budget and minimize Johnny's actor's fee for it drastically to even get it made. He also confirmed other actors and actresses were getting consistent work too.

Would anyone be surprised to learn that Elaine was absolutely horrific doing cross with this guy? She was just so aggressive from the jump. She tried to mischaracterize that because a contract wasn't written out, Johnny didn't lose the role, when she knows full well that with giant roles, they start out as verbal discussions and they don't put written contracts out there until they're all sure about details of what they want and the money. He literally explained why and she's like "Okay but can you explain why there wasn't a contract?" Like he just did. lol Elaine is just insufferable. She was outright harassing this man. She's looking like she's about to charge the Judge and sighing dramatically and rolling her eyes. I don't get this style of cross examination and how a jury isn't just like "Fuck off lady." The problem is that any legitimate points she tries to make, she just muddies with a bunch of BS, drowning it and making the jury want to call all of it a wash. He kept telling her "I don't know" to a bunch of stuff because Wingham wasn't representing him at the time.

On re-direct he was just like "Hey can you provide the rest of the context to why there was no contract since Elaine wouldn't let you?" And so he did. And he confirmed it was 2 days after the op-ed that Disney made a final decision. Them doing these short re-directs is just showing that most of the cross is just noise.

Next up, they bring in their god damn assassin: Richard Marx, who is a 50 year veteran of Hollywood deal making. Let me just list some things this man was involved with:

- Getting the first high profile actor to do voice acting for Disney, with Robin Williams.
- Securing merchandising for children's IPs such as Care Bears.
- Getting George Foreman his George Foreman Grill set up.
- Ensuring Star Wars was made and securing merchandising for George Lucas.

This man is outrageously qualified to discuss Hollywood, and that's precisely why they brought him up. He basically said with confidence as an expert everything that we believe: Amber Heard had created a cancellable situation by making an article clearly discussing Johnny Depp and his abuse and calling out Hollywood for not doing enough for her situation, and waiting until the peak of her fame with the release of Aquaman to do so. He said that Hollywood doesn't care about drinking or drugs or anything like that. He said Hollywood doesn't care if people are late when they're as high profile like Johnny Depp.

He said that in the last five years with the Me Too Movement, that they all agree on immediately terminating people in Hollywood to distance from it. This is the man who destroyed everything that Kevin Spacey was a part of after he was accused, so he had intimate experience with what happens when someone is canceled and what they do. He said it's all about protecting the brand now. He came in, did incredible damage to Amber's case.

The cross was Not-Rottenborn, who was just an absolute putz and Marx just rolled on this man. He started naming news headlines to him, over, and over, and over, and over. He just kept saying these articles don't mean anything and nobody in Hollywood cares about them. "If that's what it says, that's what it says. Are you going to keep reading articles at me?" "I didn't catch this article, I have a wife, kids, and a job."

"Are you aware that Pirates 5 made the least amount of Pirates films?" "Oh, yeah. That's true. I believe it made only $800 million."

"Oh yes, this article came from the UK Sun, which came to prominence by posting topless photos on page 3."

"Is this op-ed about Amber Heard?" "Well I don't know, did she have another husband who abused her two years prior?"

"Where is this article from? Some rogue website?" "InsidetheMagic.com. <reads headline> Is that correct?" "Assuming that this is a correct copy of this random website, yeah. It's not quoting Disney at all, but that's what this random woman says. ... What's this from? Moviemagic.com?"

Marx just shredded this dude. They could have done a lot better with him. He reiterates on cross that the only articles that matter are ones from reputable sources, like say the Washington Post. Simple re-direct.

The next guy was probably the worst witness for Johnny Depp. He's some nerd who analyzes internet trends and stuff and oh my god he was so boring. And not only was he boring, he barely proved anything, and his internet research actively seemed like it proved AGAINST Johnny Depp as his numbers of positive/negative trends began going up later. And his sample size he looked into was so small. Like I don't know why this man was put here on the stand. The point is that Johnny's career was negatively affected with the people who matter most, Hollywood execs, and not with public opinion.

On cross, they could have done so much better torching this guy, but they're just so bad. They were kind of a dick, they didn't clearly make the point that "Your trends suck and don't prove he was hurt by the op ed." They brought up their expert's info and the guy was like "I didn't make this. I don't know what articles you're talking about because I didn't plot them and wasn't asked to." They just muddied this up again so while this should have been a slam dunk, this came across as a slight loss for Depp as a witness. Re-direct was weak too.

This guy is never going to be called as an expert witness again. lol He held his own well enough, but he barely came across as selling his point well enough.

Don't worry though, they made a good pallet cleanser from that awful witness with... a video deposition! Just kidding, this sucked. It was part one of Amber Heard's nurse, Erin. So she had salacious notes. She was slightly less tight lipped than the other nurse, fortunately.

Not much notable yet, as Depp's team will get to her tomorrow. But notable things were that Amber Heard had an alcohol addiction and a cocaine addiction. She says that Amber has significant rage issues. Dr. Kippur had Johnny on a ridiculous number of medications. Like, 12 of them. This dude is ridiculous. lol Apparently Amber was doing drugs with a "high profile male visitor" who is James Franco.

My favorite part was Amber showing her 4 pictures of different styles of marks on her face in the dead of night. She looked like she wanted to laugh at one point when they were asking her if she had reported them.

In theory, Johnny should close his case in chief tomorrow. I'd be stunned if it goes into Wednesday.

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

They were very successful at controlling the narrative because the UK trial wasn't televised. Now, it's all televised and everyone can more readily hear about everything Johnny says happened and then compare it to Amber's previous stories in which she's just lied about everything pretty clearly.

It's New York Post, which is kind of a rag, but a few other sources seem to have confirmed this too. It wouldn't shock me since a "source" (Eve Barlow) living with Amber during the trial recently informed them of her routine that included studying for trial (which is weird because why does she need to study if she's just going to talk about what happened?) and then trying to villainize Johnny because the "source" said that Amber feels dehumanized because her ex-husband (who she claims abused her on the daily) is ignoring her in court.

It wouldn't surprise me though. I just think the genie is out of the bottle and I think her testimony, which is probably on Wednesday, is just going to open up even more criticism.

well it straight up says who the replacement firm is...

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

(which is weird because why does she need to study if she's just going to talk about what happened?)

this is the kind of really weird comment that shows how biased you are btw

like, its the most normal thing in the world to rehearse the incredibly specific phrasing you need to give in your statement so you don't start rambling, and say something slightly vague or that can be interpreted differently from your prior statements, and to prepare for all the questions you are going to be asked

your commentary attempts to give off this impression that you have good amount of knowledge of how court proceedings work and what the "norms" are, so you can point out when something is "weird", but if you really had any familiarity with these processes, that comment would never cross your mind. you only say it because its just another snipe at her, not because it makes any sense. studying for testimony the most normal thing imaginable for someone in her position to do

CoolCly posted...

this is the kind of really weird comment that shows how biased you are btw

like, its the most normal thing in the world to rehearse the incredibly specific phrasing you need to give in your statement so you don't start rambling, and say something slightly vague or that can be interpreted differently from your prior statements, and to prepare for all the questions you are going to be asked

your commentary attempts to give off this impression that you have good amount of knowledge of how court proceedings work and what the "norms" are, so you can point out when something is "weird", but if you really had any familiarity with these processes, that comment would never cross your mind. you only say it because its just another snipe at her, not because it makes any sense. studying for testimony the most normal thing imaginable for someone in her position to do

I don't know that I agree with most of this.

Witness prep is a thing. They give you an outline, with questions they will ask and key things they want to touch upon, and oftentimes they'll give you questions you'll probably be asked on cross. Rambling, ultimately, isn't a big deal even remotely. In fact, you're encouraged not to just recite answers because it makes you seem more unnatural (I would assume doubly so as witness that is known for acting). Because you're there to respond truthfully to your best recollection in your own words. If you miss a detail, the lawyer is there to pick up the slack and ensure you remember to say it. We saw it constantly with Johnny Depp, for instance, who was fine rambling on and on for instance. And when he missed key parts, his lawyers were there to bring him back to hit the key details.

The word "rehearse" should not be in any lexicon when you are preparing a witness for trial. They should not have any rehearsed stories because they need to come across as authentic recollections of the events. This would be more akin to coaching, if you're encouraging this, which is unethical. And you shouldn't need to study wording from prior statements because if you're telling the truth, you should know your prior statement aligns with whatever you're saying in your testimony.

Obviously this is far more different if it's a witness that, say, has to look up a bunch of numbers, and dates, and details from contracts to keep those more straight. But Amber isn't that kind of witness. She's just supposed to give an authentic answer about what she's lived through.

I'd like to know what she would possibly need to study for nightly for these past three weeks, which "source" claims she is doing, if not trying to keep stories straight that are not actually her own lived ones.

But what do I know. I only routinely deal with witness outlines for depositions.

I mean, I went with my dad to 20 court appearances and I can safely say he had to "study" events of his life. Not to say Amber isn't lying here, but it seems really common that in stressful situations (which is what my dad's divorce was) that the likelihood of misremembering, misspeaking, misquoting was super high (and did often happen).

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

And you shouldn't need to study wording from prior statements because if you're telling the truth, you should know your prior statement aligns with whatever you're saying in your testimony.

"if you're telling the truth, you shouldn't have to prepare for what you're going to say because there's no way you're going to screw up" seems like a pretty bizarre thing to say. it's easy to misspeak, like rock said.

I mean, I can get really deep in the weeds about the amount of studying that should take place versus misspeaking versus having told three versions of the truth for situations that should be engrained in your mind because of how seriously you've told them, and now you need to stick with the one version of it you told in your deposition this time to avoid perjury.

I'm not denying that studying does not exist for a lot of testimony. You do get outlines. You are told key points to hit. But ultimately, these people should have been prepped exhaustively by now to a nauseating degree and know for the most part what they are going to say, and what questions they're likely going to be asked on cross, since they have an outrageous amount of money to get prepped this much. To have to still nightly study at this stage seems inaccurate to me unless there's so many things you think you'll just not be able to remember, even with probing from your attorney. You're asked to refresh everything directly before any deposition or any sort of testimony as well. I don't buy into refreshing daily for 3 weeks as a witness who just needs to recount situations she's been prepped multiple times with her counsel, while you should be getting a refresher on it throughout this trial as you watch it.

I am enjoying the TC being cross examined for their posts about cross examination

crossception

Emeraldegg posted...

I am enjoying the TC being cross examined for their posts about cross examination

crossception

wait til i hit em with the redirect

Oh thank god, Depp's case in chief is over. We're finally going to Amber Heard's defense. Supposedly Amber should be starting it off with her testimony.

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Oh thank god, Depp's case in chief is over. We're finally going to Amber Heard's defense. Supposedly Amber should be starting it off with her testimony.

Over/under on how many lies she'll be caught in?

day 13 drip update

Amber Heard hair looking sick but she's dressed like a magician out of the 20s. Depp's tie is really nice and I want it

dude in the very far back left distracted me because half the time he wore a mask and the other half he had it on his chin. like, if you're gonna be the only person wearing a mask in the court pick a side

DAY 13

So today is the day that Johnny Depp finally ends his case in chief and Amber Heard starts her defense. And there was a motion to strike thrown in there. More on that later.

First, we finish up with Nurse Erin's testimony. I mentioned it would be more spicy but it was not. They reflected on her addictions to alcohol and cocaine a bit more before just having her relate that Amber never reported injuries to her, just those pictures without context. She mentioned once Amber had surgery on a sty she had on her eye, presumably because she'll have a picture of her with a swollen eye to claim Johnny hit her then. She confirmed Amber drank too much, laughed at her when she said she shouldn't do so many drugs, and that she was prone to rage and anger issues. Also, she had talked to the nurse about how she was jealous of Johnny's fame and became more anxious when he was GONE not when he was there. More or less things we mostly knew.

Next up is an in-person witness, Michael Spindler, who is a forensic accountant who looked at how much damages Johnny lost after the op-ed came out. Skipping through the boring stuff, he is estimated to have lost $40,318,237 as of today. Quick and easy. On cross, Rottenborn tried to rattle him, but Spindler was surprisingly chill and nonplussed throughout it all. Rottenborn was fine with his questioning, just weirdly antagonistic. Redirect was quick and simple.

And then the Plaintiff rests, finally! I think it would have been better with a witness who could kind of summarize everything, but this was fine.

So we have the Motion to Strike now, which is the Defense's opportunity to get the case dismissed. It fails like 99% of the time, but you kind of have to still do it. It's a matter of procedure. The Defense gets an opportunity to explain their side, then the Plaintiff does. Rottenborn was our guy for this, and Ben Chew was speaking for Depp.

I'm going to just go through greatest hits, but the Judge wasn't buying into dismissing it when Rottenborn was speaking, and Ben Chew kept speaking up to counter outright exaggerations from Rottenborn and at one time went "I'm sorry, I just can't wait to respond." There's just a difference in confidence between both of them, likely because one knows their case is stronger. Like I can't knock Rottenborn here. He has to do it, he knows the facts from the Plaintiff's case is strong enough that it won't be dismissed. This was fine. It was essentially denied because he tried to argue that Amber didn't have anything to do with the title of the article and the Judge was like "Okay but you need to provide proof, so I can't really make a judgment until then." Which is fair. What was crappy was him saying "They didn't call Ms. Heard in their case in chief to prove this" when both parties agreed that Amber would only be called in her Defense.

Ben Chew, in fact, could not wait to respond because he got up there and just spit fucking fire. I really recommend trying to find their response to the motion to strike because it was pretty amazing. I'll hit the key parts.

He started out by saying that they had many credible witnesses to prove that she had made her statements with malice and they were a lie, then pointed at her and said "And we even proved that SHE was the abuser in this courtroom!" That got quite a look from Amber, understandably. He used plenty of cases to back up his argument, and recited rules. He said that she co-signed the article's title by sharing it on Twitter (skeptical if this one holds, there's plausible arguments both ways). But he proved malice and intent to do more damage. He called out the ACLU for being corrupt as fuck for what they did. He brought up it was pitched to Washington Post of "Amber Heard has an article about domestic abuse, as you might recall she was beaten up by her ex husband Johnny Depp." And also brought up how the ACLU legal director said that everyone knew it was about Johnny.

He said that they specifically had to use Johnny's name, and specifically chose to release it before Aquaman, because otherwise nobody would have cared about what Amber Heard had to say, and that the only article that was interested in printing her story without the references to Johnny Depp was Teen Vogue. Absolutely fucking brutal.

He brought up that the ACLU was reprehensible because they lied about her donating all of the promised money to them. "I hope they start making these arguments. I can't wait to correct them."

He also brought up how Amber got a bogus restraining order and waited until Johnny was out of the country to file it, when she knew she would be safe, and everyone who saw her has testified that she had no bruises on her before then, including the police, and it was all part of a scheme to get $7 million that she lied about donating to the ACLU and sick and dying children so she could pocket it all.

This all feels targeted directly to Amber to rattle her before she testifies. He talked about everything she lied about, including her "final surprise she left in his bed". This was awesome.

And Rottenborn came up and said it was "clearly tailored for the media" which... he's probably not entirely wrong there. lol But he didn't have a great rebuttal, which again is fine. I can't judge. And, obviously, the Judge denied the motion to strike. The Defense has to go next.

I should also say it's been confirmed that Amber's new PR person was in the court room and got in trouble twice for using his phone. Like FFS this isn't difficult just don't use your phone you guys KNOW this. They were passing notes and stuff to him throughout the day, which whatever. It's worth noting this because of what we have up next.

So I'm trying to find a positive out of Amber's first witness. Dr. Dawn Hughes is a forensic psychologist, just like Johnny's Dr. Curry, who you might remember me saying presented herself incredibly well. Dr. Hughes has many, many qualifications, and she's done 100 court cases, and spoke about herself for at least half an hour which seemed excessive, and... if I'm frank, she did not seem very credible despite all of this.

I'm going to be completely honest and say she made me very uncomfortable on a personal level because of my own experiences, because she spoke about domestic abuse, and rather than using neutral pronouns and terms (such as how Dr. Curry did), Dr. Hughes said "she" when referring to a victim and "he" referring to an abuser. Dr. Hughes described every single abusive behavior she could in these terms, but we just got done listening to Johnny's case, and everything she said, all that jury is probably going to think is how Amber did all of that to HIM. Like she described exact things we heard in audio clips. She spent a significant amount of time on this, and she came across as horribly bias. Obviously, any expert is going to be bias to whoever they are presenting for, but she seemed well above and beyond.

For instance, she claimed that everything Amber may have done such as hitting Johnny or insulting him was fine because she was just responding to Johnny's "abuse" and excusable, but anything that Johnny said or did was inexcusably abuse. It came across as very disingenuous and I don't see a jury really supporting this. It felt like this whole thing was downplaying the existence of male victims of domestic abuse, which was especially grody. I frankly don't really want to listen to it again, so I won't get into the specifics and refresh myself, but you can go back and listen to excerpts to understand what I mean.

So you know everything that Dr. Curry said about Amber and her disorders and her feigning PTSD? Dr. Hughes here says that Amber had no disorders but absolutely did have PTSD. Everything that Dr. Curry said, Dr. Hughes claimed the opposite, more or less. It's expected, really. You want to bring an expert that will contradict a lot of what the other expert says. But it felt very much like the very exact opposite.

The thing that probably looked the worst was that she was trying to read from her notes on her testing results, and explain how she was evaluating Amber, to the point they had to talk to the judge multiple times while Elaine was saying "It's just a sticky note!" When she's dead ass holding up pieces of paper and reading off it. This is not supposed to be allowed because if the expert is using materials in a testimony, the other party is allowed to see all of these notes and such, and Depp's team wasn't given any of it. Johnny's entire legal team was exasperated by it. In contrast, Dr. Curry didn't have to read off any notes or papers, like an expert is supposed to do. Even worse was that Dr. Hughes looked so pissed when they kept objecting to this.

Also strange is that she basically said she took everything Amber said as the full on truth. And why it looks bad that Dr. Hughes had to keep looking at her notes for the actual important testing results and details is that she named about 30+ stories and situations of a lot of the stories Amber told about Johnny one after another. She was full on testifying for Amber at this point, which was extremely jarring after having heard Johnny's case in full because we have heard stories from witnesses who were reliable and you just go "This doesn't check out." In one instance, supposedly during the Australia incident where Johnny had his finger blown off, she said that Amber reported that she was violated with a bottle which... come on. None of that adds up with what we know about that night and what people have said.

Dr. Hughes made a critical mistake for Amber Heard though. She said that there was no evidence of Amber being abusive in any relationship before Johnny or after Johnny. They immediately objected and went to talk to the Judge. This is outrageously significant because in normal situations, you can't bring up prior bad acts to prove current bad acts. However, if a witness brings up a prior act that's out of the scope to prove a point in their case, that means that they can use it to counter their point. This is absolutely awful for Amber because she was arrested for having beaten the shit out of her ex-wife at an airport in 2009. And it's also awful because there are pictures of Elon Musk having bruises on his face when he and Amber were dating. So now, they get to bring both of these things up not only to Dr. Hughes and ask "Okay but did you consider this situation in your study?" AND they can just outright ask Amber "So tell us about when you got arrested for beating up your ex-wife." Frankly, Dr. Hughes should have known better than to open up for that with her experience level. We won't find out until tomorrow if the Judge is allowing it, but I'll be surprised if she didn't because it was pretty clear.

Another bizarre moment was that the expert can only testify what they put on the Expert Designation (you may remember me talking about that before with Dr. Curry), and they objected to Dr. Hughes trying to give her opinion on why Amber didn't leave the relationship based on her studies. Elaine goes "Well point to where it's not on the designation." She lost this sidebar. There were so many sidebars in this testimony.

That was it for today. They'll start up with the cross examination on this tomorrow. I think this was a very poor witness because she just named a bunch of stuff. This probably would have been more effective AFTER we have eye witnesses who testified to a lot of this stuff so you can be like "Okay, I can believe these stories..." but everything we know about Amber that the Plaintiffs have said about Amber Heard is that she's just a liar. So all of these wild stories just immediately get heard with bad faith.

It's funny to read Biscuit's take on things because everywhere else I've generally read it, Dr. Hughes was a very good witness for Heard. Maybe not enough to get her off the hook, but she spent far more time with Heard than Dr. Curry, and also remarked that none of the other therapists seeing Heard would diagnose her with borderline personality disorder. Not to mention Curry is not board certified, like Dr. Hughes.

TheRock1525 posted...

It's funny to read Biscuit's take on things because everywhere else I've generally read it, Dr. Hughes was a very good witness for Heard. Maybe not enough to get her off the hook, but she spent far more time with Heard than Dr. Curry, and also remarked that none of the other therapists seeing Heard would diagnose her with borderline personality disorder. Not to mention Curry is not board certified, like Dr. Hughes.

The therapists aren't SUPPOSED to diagnose their patients with a disorder like that. A psychologist is supposed to be the one who diagnose a disorder, and Curry said that she was able to diagnose Heard with disorders and Hughes says that she was unable to diagnose her with a single disorder. Dr. Curry mentioned that about Dr. Hughes mentioning that in her report during her testimony. She gets a chance on rebuttal to respond to Dr. Hughes later.

I think there are certain people that Dr. Hughes' testimony could appeal to, but I just don't think she would play well to a jury who just had to sit and listen to the entirety of Johnny's case, and I think I was able to explain my issues with her testimony. Obviously my opinion isn't the definitive one. I encourage anyone to look at different sources and compare if they'd like.

So for a witness like Dr. Hughes how much of the trial is she there for. Like was she actually around for Dr. Curry's testimony, or was she allowed to watch it on tv?

Colegreen_c12 posted...

So for a witness like Dr. Hughes how much of the trial is she there for. Like was she actually around for Dr. Curry's testimony, or was she allowed to watch it on tv?

Expert witnesses are allowed to sit through the whole trial or watch it. For instance, Dr. Curry was in the courtroom yesterday, because she'll have the opportunity to response during Depp's rebuttal.

Also it's worth mentioning that Dr. Curry had her hair down and god damn. She's beautiful.

I mean she still was with her hair up as well but just damn

Amber is expected to be on the stand in about half an hour when they come back from lunch. There is a week long recess after Thursday because the Judge will be at a conference (probably shouldn't be stalling the trial for this week but oh well). So we probably won't get cross until after that.

It should be 1.5 days of a wild ride though.

CassandraCain posted...

Also it's worth mentioning that Dr. Curry had her hair down and god damn. She's beautiful.

I mean she still was with her hair up as well but just damn

yesss more hair comments

the commentary we deserve, but not the one it needs right now

Also saw that Elaine mistakenly addressed Dr. Hughes as Dr. Curry a couple times. Seems as if Elaine's mind games were reversed so hard that she now can't stop thinking about how utterly destroyed she was by Dr. Curry lol

DAY 14

Big day today, but we start with the cross of Dr. Hughes. You may remember me saying I thought this would be huge... but...it was fine, and it should have been a hell of a lot better than it was. They got to points but never really drilled them in entirely. I have a theory why though.

But they open it with questioning about how Dr. Hughes is horribly biased against men in her studies and descriptions. Pointed out her pronouns she used for it, then pointed out she has never defending a male in a domestic abuse case and has only ever determined a woman has been a victim and never the abuser. She went "No, that's not right! I also defended young boys who were abused by adults and once I defended a male who was an abuser in a homosexual relationship!" Like, come on. This was easily the strongest part of this cross. It went down from there. They also used powerpoints she's presented about defending women who killed their partners which was whatever too.

Worth noting is that suddenly today she has amazing memory and doesn't need to be looking at her notes anymore.

He questioned the fact that Dr. Hughes claimed that Amber's therapists didn't diagnose any mental disorders and pointed out that they don't actually diagnose any and she went "Well they told me that there weren't any I should look for!"

Another good point was when he pulled up the giant knife that Amber got Johnny that said "Until Death" on it in Spanish, and then asked if a woman who was afraid that she would get murdered had bought a large knife for her abusive partner. She went "There's context!" That was weak.

They then played the clip where Amber admitted to hitting Johnny and calls him a giant baby for having a problem for it and that he needs to grow up, and also admitted that she started the fight. It ends with "And you did the admirable thing to retreat from a fight!" The attorney asked if Dr. Hughes thought it was admirable to retreat from a fight, and she said yes. And then he got her to admit that it was not reactive violence in this case after claiming Amber only acted in reactive violence.

She also go weasely when he asked if it was reactive violence to throw bottles of vodka at your partner for falling off the wagon, but ultimately got her to admit that the first one might be reactive but the second wouldn't be, and then she got annoyed and said "It's never okay to throw vodka bottles at people!" Oof.

What he did after this was spend a lot of time tearing down how she did the test by showing it off. Mostly, she left off filling out some things. Some minor, but a major one is that she said the event for PTSD was... Interpersonal Violence from Johnny Depp. Which is absurd because it's not a moment. It's not isolated to one instance. And she put absolutely nothing about the situation at all and was like "Well no I knew what happened because we talked about it." But he rightfully pointed out that she just didn't include a full analysis. My thinking for why this all seemed relatively tame from here on out and not a layup blood bath was because Dr. Curry on rebuttal is probably going to come in and talk about how Dr. Hughes didn't do a good job on her analysis. They sort of set the stage up for it, and I don't know any other reason they wouldn't go in harder.

So here is the massive blunder from Depp's team. Remember when I said that they opened the door to talk about Amber's other relationships where she was an abuser? Well, Depp's lawyer asked Dr. Hughes about when she said that Amber wasn't abusive in any prior relationships and Hughes said "No, I never said that." Then they immediately sidebar for a while. They actually don't let them discuss it when they leave the sidebar. How the absolute hell did they not get this in? The only thing I can think of is because she decided to LIE and change her story (for the obvious reason she knew she screwed up), that Depp's team didn't get a quick transcript snippet from her saying that which is crazy to me. I'm actually shocked they didn't get this in, because it should have been the easiest thing to do.

Elaine hopped up for the re-direct and did a bit of damage control, but I think its really clear Dr. Hughes is absurdly bias and ommitting obvious information at this point. Nothing that notable, honestly, except bad lawyering from Elaine when she tried to get more complete evidence in after it was originally admitted.

Anyway, next is Amber Heard's testimony. Now, you guys know I don't believe her, I know she's lied A LOT, and that I'm already going into this unbiased. It's hard to strip that. I had tried, but it came across as horribly rehearsed and just fabricated stories. I wanted to be more fair and see what other legal professionals. So I went to one I follow who has been a prosecutor and is now a defense attorney that has dealt with victims discussing their abuse often for her opinion. And then I also got the opinion of a lawyer who deals with a ton of divorce work and hears often about abusive situations too. That also led me to a panel of attorneys talking about it who have no agenda on LawTube (YouTube's legal community). Consensus is that she's clearly lying and telling rehearsed, unnatural stories.

It was hard for me to place exactly why it felt so off, for the most part. I think a lot of it was going 0-100 emotionally when it came to telling the story. She also went out of her way to tell her traumatizing abuse in excruciating detail, and peppered it with a lot of really unnecessary details that can't be impeached. Typically, it's a lot harder for people of abuse to want to give so many details. You can also compare her telling her story during the UK trial to this one, and she was ripping pissed and angry during each story, and now she's just sad and feels like someone acting like she's traumatized. She also couldn't shed a single tear while she was crying which... was a little off-putting, to the point it seemed like she was almost angry she wasn't able to produce tears.

What also makes her stories highly suspect is that she has called 0 people to corroborate any of them or lend credence to them, and that's her choice to do that. And in a couple of stories so far, the only witness to this is Jerry Judge (who is deceased) and Johnny Depp's daughter, who it was agreed upon they would not be involved, or these unnamed friends of hers or random people who witnessed it. It's worth noting that Johnny Depp did not look up a single time during this testimony, and only looked up at her when she was talking about his daughter.

I'm not saying this is the case for sure. I wanted to try to get other opinions since I know it's a serious thing to call out someone who claims abuse as not being truthful. And it's very difficult to come to grips that she would make up elaborate lies like these because of how sinister they would be, but it really, really just feels like it. But you are all welcome to watch for yourself or go and look to other sources. This is just what I've gathered with some extra opinions. With that, I'll summarize everything she said.

She began by discussing that the hardest thing she had to do was give a deposition for the UK trial, until this. It was something that struck out to me since you would think the days she almost died and was thrown through glass and brutally beaten and sexually assaulted would have topped that. I have no doubt it will be questioned. She also talked about her childhood about how her father was a complete sweetheart (when it is on the record he abused her and her mom, and he was arrested recently for running a dog fighting ring). She discussed just being a modest girl working many part time jobs to leave her small town in Texas and did work to help the deaf and homeless and went to audition 10 times a day to try to get an acting job in Hollywood.

Amber would then go on to discuss when she auditioned for The Rum Diaries, and she kind of framed it as Johnny trying to groom her, saying multiple times how young she was and how much older he was, and how famous he was. She talked about how they didn't really talk until the press tour and then they just fell in love then. She eventually contradicted Johnny's claim that she got really weird once when she took off his boots by saying she didn't care if he took them off himself.

She discussed him criticizing what she wore and claiming that he would say "You're whoring yourself out" among other things. Amber's favorite phrase is "As stupid as it sounds" before saying what would be a giant red flag. She said it at least a dozen times during this.

She talked about the first time she said that Johnny hit her. They were hanging out and asked him about his WINONA tattoo he had, saying that she didn't know what it was. And he apparently slapped her for no reason and asked if she thought she was funny.

She said she laughed at first until he kept hitting her and she was on the edge of the couch, looking at the dirty carpet, wondering just how she ended up on that dirty carpet, and that she didn't notice how dirty that carpet was before, and what to do, and she didn't know how to react, and that she just sat there wondering how much time does she have left, and what she needs to do because god did he just hit her? No she didn't want to leave him, she didn't want to go because this was the man she was in love with and she knows you don't come back from that because you don't hit women and you don't hit men and you can't hit anyone just because she knew it was wrong and she knew she had to leave and that she had to leave that room and leave the best thing that ever happened to her and she wishes she could have said that she walked right out of that house and she drew a line and she stood up for herself, but she was just looking at that dirty carpet, trying to will herself to walk out that door because she needed to and she remembered just standing up and looking at him in the eye and she looked at him in the eye because she didn't know what else to do and before she knows it he starts crying and she's never seen an adult man crying before and she never saw her father cry at her grandmother's funeral it's weird and he grabs her hand and she says he'll never do that again and that he's so sorry, baby, and that he thought he put that fucker away and that he killed that monster and...

I typed this out just so you have an idea of how her testimony for these moments of assault she describes are. I don't intend to describe it in that much detail again, but I think it's important to kind of get an idea for how she presents these when she speaks. She just loads it with so much detail that so much of it gets lost.

Anyway, she also mentioned watching her breath on a window of her door and wondering if she had the strength to continue doing this before leaving. I should note objections have been on point for Depp's lead female attorney, Vasquez. She won the vast majority of them.

She continued to discuss how he'd accuse her of cheating and would shove her down and hit her frequently still. Many mentions of walking on eggshells. She also said he'd disappear for days and ghost her entirely and just reappear.

Amber told another story about how Johnny viciously hit her in the face multiple times and hit her arm, and they showed a picture she took of a bruise on her arm, but you can see her face clearly without a single mark or swelling on it, so what are we doing here? Also apparently he's always drinking a ton and just doing a bunch of cocaine before these incidents. She claimed she never did cocaine though, despite her nurse's notes saying she had an addiction to coke.

She also told a story about how him and her friends were all in a car and how he held his tiny dog out the window, so I guess he's also a dog abuser, and she talked about how everyone was calling and texting her about how stressed they were about it. Also none of them could testify to this story apparently because they are not being called.

Also, remember that picture of the neatly drawn cocaine lines and the full glasses of liquor next to his fancy cocaine box? Well, I discovered there are multiple drafts of this picture, with things either moved or taken away from it. So uh, seems pretty faked to me. Anyway, this was shown to tell a story about how he was too knocked out and was late to set.

Next is the story about how a bunch of them did MDMA and mushrooms and she claims that Johnny grabbed the girl who got too high and groping Amber and claims that she just bumped into her, and he grabbed hold of her arm tight and told this random girl and said she is touching his fucking girl. And he twisted her wrist and said "Do you know how many pounds of pressure it takes to break a wrist?" This girl was also not available for testimony to verify this story. She also claims that they went into the trailer, she tried to peacefully talk him down, and then threw stuff and she can't remember anything he said before, but she remembers verbatim that he asked where the fuck it is and not to lie to him and then ripped her dress and groping her and then did a "cavity search" in her private area for cocaine. And all she could do was just sit there and stare at a stupid light. She doesn't remember anything that happened the rest of that day, the morning, or the day after, but she DOES remember looking at her friends having fun in the pool and how they didn't know about what happened.

She also told a story about a plane ride to Russia where she opened by saying "That was the first and last time I ever decided to do drugs with Johnny, as stupid as that sounds." Girl just told us about a story where they both did MDMA, and started by saying they both did MDMA on this plane. Apparently a flight attendant came over, Johnny convinced her to do MDMA, and then he snapped her wrist because she also apparently got flirty with Amber (but not ACTUALLY flirty). (Btw after previously saying she didn't know the name of the girl from the last story, she was able to tell us the name of her this time in reference to the wrist grab) This flight attendant was not here to testify either. Johnny apparently beat the hell out of Amber after that and broke her nose and said that Johnny's deceased security guard Jerry Judge had seen it and gave her a handkerchief. There are pictures of her the following day with no marks or swelling on her, which is strange for her having a broken nose.

She told a story about when she got to spend time with his kids on a yacht, and she used Lily-Rose, Johnny Depp's daughter, to help tell a story about how he got way too drunk and Lily-Rose was concerned. Keep in mind that Lily-Rose will not be testifying because Johnny did not want his kids involved at all with this. Apparently he tried to beat the crap out of Amber again because he thought she was accusing Amber of cheating on him and that he had her by the throat in the air and said he could fucking kill her. She recalls that what she said hurt more was when he said she was embarrassing. They showed texts from around that time.

That's it for today. But... fuck this is hard to listen to since it just didn't feel natural at all.

Amber going from wearing business suits for the past week to wearing a catholic elementary school teacher outfit is certainly a contrast.

So Amber told some crazy stories. At this point it's about whether you believe a human being could actually do all that insane shit she told about, or someone is so deranged they made up all of these stories in a misguided attempt to get money.

Like it's baffling to me why anyone would believe Amber at all.

Them not calling any of the witnesses or other harmed/threatened women definitely doesnt help her credibility.

Also some of these things like a broken nose would not be able to be covered by makeup.

It has been a Disco Bloodbath of objections from Camille Vasquez on Johnny's team. She is killing it. Amber and Elaine are getting so pissed off about it because they keep trying to use hearsay to prove the truth of something. It seems like they let them say whatever yesterday and today they're just done with their weaselly shit.

A bunch of people on a plane all witnessed Johnny hit Amber (despite people on that plane already testifying nothing happened), and only Amber's friend she isn't having testify as a witness and Jerry Judge (who is dead) asked her if she was alright, and was rightfully objected to.

This thing just falls apart the moment that there's actual people who were around, and she's trying to go with the narrative that all of the people in Johnny's life are just lying to protect him.

clive barker name drop

author of Midnight Meat Train

Today has been a complete disaster so far. There's no way cross begins today. They kept trying to use hearsay to make her point, but it's been shut down constantly and they've had so many sidebars they lose each time because Elaine is absolutely awful and it just looks so bad.

These stories just don't stand up and she's just telling the literal opposite of what everyone says, and she's just fluffing everything up. And there is not a single person who they have to corroborate her side of things.

I saw this thing on Twitter about how Amber Heard was using movie quotes for part of her statements including one from The Talented Mr. Ripley.

That's bullshit right? She's not that stupid right? These were always just images of the quotes and never a clip so...

kateee posted...

I saw this thing on Twitter about how Amber Heard was using movie quotes for part of her statements including one from The Talented Mr. Ripley.

That's bullshit right? She's not that stupid right? These were always just images of the quotes and never a clip so...

There's also other, uh, suspect wording from various other movies. I'm not willing to go all in on that theory, but if more of it starts to come out I might buy into it more.

Edit: I can confirm those are the words she's said though, that people are drawing parallels to.

that's hearsay

talk about midnight meat train plz

Aecioo I could talk about Midnight Meat Train for a long time. It's an awesome film. It's very underrated. My only complaint is that the ending twists kinda come out of nowhere, but beyond that it's outstanding.

Amber Heard's testimony of what happened in Australia is absolutely vile because there's no corroborating evidence at all or any notation of her having a single injury, and just out and out none of it making sense.

Like this is just evil to make up what she did here for actual victims.

Amber is definitely using the "believe women" thing to her advantage, and you have to remember that she's an actress. Meanwhile most of Johnny Depp's witnesses are ordinary people who aren't trained to fake their emotions to get people to buy into their character. Yeah, Depp's an actor too, but his employees are not.

Based on all the witness reports, Amber's acting, and is trying to make herself look like a heroine, a champion of abuse victims... when she's oozing contradictions and thinking it's cool to quote movies during a testimony. She has faked her memories to make herself believable. It's disgusting that someone would do that, because it makes people doubt actual abuse victims.

I also particularly chuckle at her saying the late Jerry Judge saw some things and would testify to such. We don't know what he'd have said. I mean, what if he agreed with all of Johnny's witnesses? That would make Amber Heard blatantly guilty. It's already clear that she's the scum of the earth but trying to use someone who is deceased as evidence is just... hilarious for all the wrong reasons.

I do think "Look, I don't have any witnesses, but this guy that's dead totally would have agreed with me, honest" is a kinda gross strategy.

https://twitter.com/ShadowTodd/status/1520640935826100224?t=n1ymrxNdKIBqJLelFTRgnw&s=19

This might shed some light on why Johnny Depp lost the UK case. It did not frame him as a good person at all.

midnight
meat
train

So I probably can't get a summary up until tomorrow maybe (which works because there's a 10 day break god why).

But the quick version is just that this was a complete disaster. But it kind of had to be. She made up all of these absolutely insane, monstrous stories in the UK trial, so she needed to keep with them here, because she never expected she'd actually have to speak about them again. She told stories about some of the most vile and sick abuse I've ever heard, and she never gets medical treatment and she shows pictures where she says her nose was broken and her nose is fine the next day, or she shows pictures after a violent fight of the ground and damage and goes "Now if you can believe it, this is actually a lot more cleaned up but it was so much worse". She starts every insane lie she's about to tell with "If you can believe it" or "I know it sounds crazy." And she's just like, excited to tell these details about horrific assault.

But she can't just be like "Yeah, listen, we were fucked up and we both threw blows at each other, but he started it most of the time and I got hit." Because she didn't say that in the UK trial and they'll just shred her on it if it wasn't accurate. But she's just completely course corrected to "I am a saint and the perfect wife and I just took all of this horrific abuse and I swear the only time I hit him ever was to protect my sister." I don't know how anyone can possibly believe this. I don't know what the jury is thinking, but I think they have to smell the bullshit too. And if they don't yet, the cross is going to massacre any credibility she may have.