Johnny Depp And Amber

Heard’s Court Reporter Has

Claimed That A “Few” Of The
Jurors Fell Asleep During The
Trial
The jury was made up of five men and
two women, and they were not isolated
from social media during the trial.
Stephanie Soteriou
Posted on June 7, 2022 at 5:46 am

In 2018, Amber Heard wrote an op-

ed for the Washington Post. The
piece, which was fewer than 1,000
words long, called for there to be
more support for women who had
survived violence.

While the article never mentioned

her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, by
name, Heard said she’d become “a
public figure representing domestic
abuse” two years earlier, which is
when she’d filed for divorce from
Depp and obtained a temporary
restraining order against him.

In a 2016 statement, Heard claimed

that Depp had been “verbally and
physically abusive” toward her
throughout their relationship. In the
op-ed, Heard said that the public
reaction to her statement had
offered her “the rare vantage point
of seeing, in real time, how
institutions protect men accused of
abuse.”

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Although Depp’s name wasn’t

mentioned in the article, and despite
much of the piece being more
generic advocacy for social change,
Depp filed a defamation lawsuit
against Heard as he denied ever
being abusive toward her.

That case went to trial in 2020, with

Heard testifying on behalf of the
Sun that Depp had been abusive
throughout their relationship. Depp
ended up losing the case after a
judge ruled that there was enough
evidence to support the
publication’s decision to call him a
“wife beater.”

However, the judge’s verdict was

not grounds to dismiss Depp’s
defamation lawsuit against Heard,
and it went to court in April of this
year. The six-week trial took place in
Virginia, and the state’s laws
allowed for the whole thing to be
livestreamed and watched by the
public, which secured it a captive
audience across the globe.

In fact, the accessibility of the case

ended up coming under scrutiny as
Depp v. Heard became a trial by
TikTok, with social media users
found to be editing audio snippets
from the testimonies and turning
tearful allegations of abuse into
comedy videos.

It was argued that the severity of

Heard’s allegations was being
overshadowed by the fanfare of the
case, with her distressing accounts
of sexual, physical, and emotional
violence turned into public ridicule.

The incredibly high-profile trial

came to an end on Wednesday,
when the jury of five men and two
women ruled largely in Depp’s favor.

They ordered Heard to pay him a

total of $15 million: $10 million in
compensatory damages, and
another $5 million in punitive
damages after finding her liable on
three counts in the op-ed.

These counts included the headline

itself, as well as two further
statements within the piece.

The trial’s stenographer, Judy

Bellinger, has now made some
claims about the jury’s behavior
throughout the trial after she was
called a “rockstar” by Judge Penney
Azcarate.

A stenographer, also known as a

court reporter, is the person who
captures the live testimony in
proceedings and writes it into an
official, certified transcript.

“There were a few jurors who were

dozing off,” she claimed. “And it was
tough. There were a lot of video
depositions, and they would just sit
there, and all of a sudden I'd see
their head drop."
#JudyBellinger, the #Depp v. #Heard freelance court
reporter, said in an EXCLUSIVE interview that some jurors
were dozing off during the defamation trial.
09:11 PM - 06 Jun 2022

Twitter: @LawCrimeNetwork

Bellinger went on to add that the

“best” juror who paid the most
attention was a woman alternate
picked at random, and she was not
involved in the final verdict.

“Unfortunately, the one alternate

that was on there, she was probably
the one that listened the most,”
Bellinger explained. “I watched her
facial expressions, she was very
deeply into every word that was
being said. I thought she would've
made a great juror, and she did not
get to see it to the end. She was
paying close attention.”

The comments come after Heard’s

attorney, Elaine Bredehoft,
scrutinized the fact that the jury
were not sequestered in the trial,
which means that they could be on
social media and discuss the trial
with friends and family while sitting
on the case.

Bredehoft argued that social media

was “absolutely” in favor of Depp,
and that Heard was “demonized”
throughout the trial, which could
have swayed the jurors’ opinions.

Jurors were encouraged not to

research the case or look on social
media during breaks from the
courtroom, but Bredehoft said:
“How can you not? They went home
every night, they have families, the
families are on social media. We had
a 10-day break in the middle
because of the judicial conference.
There's no way they couldn't have
been influenced by it."

“And it was horrible — it really, really

was lopsided," she added of the
online reaction. “It was like the
Roman Colosseum, how they
viewed this whole case."

Lawyers for Heard previously

confirmed that she “absolutely”
plans to appeal the verdict, and she
added in a statement: “I’m
heartbroken that the mountain of
evidence still was not enough to
stand up to the disproportionate
power, influence, and sway of my
ex-husband.”

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“I’m even more disappointed with

what this verdict means for other
women. It is a setback,” she
continued. “It sets back the clock to
a time when a woman who spoke up
and spoke out could be publicly
shamed and humiliated. It sets back
the idea that violence against
women is to be taken seriously.”

“I believe Johnny’s attorneys

succeeded in getting the jury to
overlook the key issue of Freedom
of Speech and ignore evidence that
was so conclusive that we won in
the UK,” Heard went on. “I’m sad I
lost this case. But I am sadder still
that I seem to have lost a right I
thought I had as an American — to
speak freely and openly.”

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