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Ms. Heard’s legal professionals sought to impress upon the jury that although the defamation trial centered on lurid particulars of alleged spousal abuse, Mr. Depp’s lawsuit was finally about what one referred to as “one piece of paper.”
His case revolved round Ms. Heard’s 2018 op-ed in The Washington Put up, headlined, “I spoke up in opposition to sexual violence — and confronted our tradition’s wrath. That has to alter.” The article, which didn’t point out Mr. Depp’s identify, carried Ms. Heard’s byline, however there have been many extra individuals concerned within the article.
Early drafts of the op-ed had been ready by the communications division of the American Civil Liberties Union and honed by means of back-and-forth emails with Ms. Heard’s legal professionals, stated Terence Dougherty, the A.C.L.U.’s normal counsel. Shortly earlier than the op-ed was printed, Ms. Heard was appointed an A.C.L.U. ambassador with a give attention to girls’s rights and gender-based violence.
Throughout a video deposition performed to the jury through the trial, a lawyer for Mr. Depp learn emails from the A.C.L.U. explaining how the op-ed got here to be. An e mail from a communications division worker there recommended that Ms. Heard write an article about how victims of gender-based violence “have been made much less protected underneath Trump and the way individuals can take motion,” and famous that Ms. Heard may weave in her private story.
One other A.C.L.U worker despatched a primary draft of the op-ed to Ms. Heard, and through the modifying course of together with her legal professionals, point out of her marriage and profitable utility for a brief restraining order had been excised, Mr. Dougherty testified. In the long run, Ms. Heard referred to herself within the op-ed as a “public determine representing home abuse” — a phrase on the heart of Mr. Depp’s lawsuit.
In an e mail from one A.C.L.U. worker to a different, which a lawyer for Mr. Depp learn throughout questioning of Mr. Dougherty, the worker famous that Ms. Heard’s legal professionals had taken out “a few of the stuff that made it actually highly effective.”
“I believe that Amber’s contributions to the portion of the op-ed that talks about private experiences is a part of what knowledgeable the view that this was a robust op-ed,” Mr. Dougherty testified.
Mr. Dougherty stated that the publication of the op-ed was timed to coincide with the discharge of the film “Aquaman,” during which Ms. Heard had a starring function. Ms. Heard stated this timing was to not promote “Aquaman” however to make use of the film to advertise the problems mentioned within the article, which included advocating a bolstered Violence In opposition to Girls Act and in opposition to the Trump administration’s insurance policies round adjudicating sexual assault on faculty campuses.
The A.C.L.U.’s founding rules had been free speech and civil liberties, however in recent times it has develop into extra concerned in progressive causes, fueling inner tensions over whether or not it has strayed from its authentic give attention to First Modification points.
Ms. Heard’s legal professionals argued that Ms. Heard had a proper to debate her experiences with spousal abuse and that it was undisputed that, in 2016, she turned a “public determine representing home abuse” when she was granted a brief restraining order in opposition to Mr. Depp after reporting assaults by him to a court docket.
Mr. Depp’s legal professionals asserted that the article made clear allusions to Ms. Heard’s prior accusations — which Mr. Depp denied — and that they had been central to the piece’s relevance. The three parts of the op-ed that had been at subject within the defamation case included the headline, which Ms. Heard and the A.C.L.U. stated they weren’t concerned in; the sentence about her being a “public determine representing home abuse”; and a later passage about seeing “how establishments shield males accused of abuse.”
“The A.C.L.U. and Ms. Heard had been conspiring to make it very clear that these three statements had been associated to Mr. Depp as a result of in any other case no one had any curiosity within the article,” a lawyer for Mr. Depp, Benjamin Chew, argued in court docket.
The A.C.L.U. was not named as a defendant within the case.
After Ms. Heard was granted a $7 million fee in her divorce settlement with Mr. Depp, she pledged half of the cash to the A.C.L.U. Mr. Depp’s legal professionals have sought to undermine Ms. Heard’s credibility by displaying that she paid a fraction of the $3.5 million she had pledged to the A.C.L.U. Mr. Dougherty testified that Ms. Heard stopped funds as a result of she bumped into monetary difficulties, which Ms. Heard testified had been a results of Mr. Depp’s authorized proceedings in opposition to her.
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