Johnny Depp Has the Upper Hand in Defamation Trial Given Recent Jury's Findings
Johnny Depp continues to get experts' approvals while the jury conducts deliberations in the defamation case.
Following the closing arguments, the jury in Depp and Amber Heard's defamation trial received complicated questions to determine the right ruling on the case.
On Tuesday, the seven-person panel met again for the deliberations in a courtroom in Fairfax, Virginia. The jury has not been asked to determine whether Heard was abused.
Instead, they are currently weighing in if the "Aquaman" actress truly defamed Depp when she wrote the 2018 The Washington Post op-ed titled "I spoke up against sexual violence - and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change."
With that, the jurors must find out if the headline and two passages in the article are defamatory.
But after seeing the eight questions, the jury was confused about one of which.
According to the New York Post's report, judge Penney Azcarate revealed that the jury asked if the question related to just the headline itself or the entire op-ed.
"The statement is the headline and not the entire op-ed," the judge said.
The first passage reads: "two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture's wrath" while the second one states, "I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real-time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse."
They also have to find out if the actress acted and wrote the op-ed with actual malice, and they have to prove it by having evidence that she knew that she wrote something false or that she did it with reckless disregard for the truth.
The jurors must have a unanimous decision to determine the winner in the $50 million case.
Is Johnny Depp Winning the Case?
In the same New York Post article, Texas civil lawyer Katherine Lizardo said it was too early to guess which way the jury is currently eyeing.
However, she noted that the question looked advantageous for Depp. She explained that if the jury finds that Depp did not abuse Heard, then her statement in the op-ed was indeed defamatory.
Meanwhile, former California judge Halim Dhanidina highlighted the jury's efforts to reveal the truth soon.
"You never want to predict where a jury is leaning based on a question but it at least appears that they are focused on the appropriate legal issues, which may benefit one side more than the other," Dhanidina said. "But it at least gives you faith that the jury is trying to do the right thing here."
