In the interview, the attorney blamed a number of factors for Heard’s loss, citing evidentiary decisions and the influence of social media.
“She was demonized here,” Bredehoft said. “Several things were allowed in this courtroom that should not have been allowed, and they caused confusion for the jury.”. He cited the different outcome in the UK, where a court ruled against Depp after she sought a lawsuit against The Sun for referring to him as a “wife beater”.
He said that alongside Heard he was allowed to tell the jury “about the UK trial. So the damages are completely skewed. There is no damage. It was stopped on November 2, 2020, which is when the judgment was issued in the UK.”
The Virginia jury awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. Judge Penney Azcarate quickly reduced the punitive damages to the maximum allowed, $350,000.
Asked if Heard can pay almost $10.4 million, Bredehoft said: “Oh no. Absolutely not.” The jury also awarded Heard $2 million in damages for one of her claims, made by Depp’s attorneys, that she and her friends staged one of the couple’s arguments in her penthouse in downtown Los Angeles and that the actresses’ accusations were a “hoax”.
Bredehoft said that one of the first things Heard said after the verdict was: “I feel very sorry for all those women. This is a setback for all women in and out of the courtroom, and she feels the burden of that.”.
She added: “Really what happened here is a tale of two trials.” She said they were not allowed to tell the jury that the UK court “found that Mr Depp had committed at least 12 acts of domestic violence, including sexual violence, against Amber. So what did Depp’s team learn from this? Demonize Amber and suppress the evidence. We had a huge amount of evidence that was suppressed in this case that was in the UK case.”
She said that Depp’s team was “able to suppress the medical records, which were very. very significant because they showed a pattern … going back to 2012 when Amber reported this to her therapist, for example. we had [una] significant number of text messages, including from Mr. Depp’s assistants, saying: ‘When I told him he kicked you, he cried. He is very sorry. That didn’t go in.”
Bredehoft also suggested that jurors, who were told not to watch media coverage of the trial, were likely aware of what was happening on social media, where sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of Depp.
“They went home every night. They have families. Families are on social networks. We had a 10-day break in the middle due to a Judicial Conference. There’s no way they weren’t influenced by that, and it was horrible. It really, really was unbalanced. …It was like the Roman Colosseum, how do you see this whole case”. Bredehoft also noted that he was opposed to allowing cameras in the courtroom, which he said made the trial “a zoo.”
Bredehoft said he believes the jury’s verdict for Depp sends “a horrible message… It’s a significant setback because that’s exactly what it means. Unless he pulls out his phone and videotapes his spouse or his partner hitting him, sure enough, they won’t believe him.”
Source: Ambito
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