How Amber Heard Could Still Win Even if Jury Thinks She Lied

As Johnny Depp and Amber Heard await the verdict from the jury in their high profile defamation trial, fans are continuing to comb over all minute details that may indicate which way the ruling will sway.

Depp, 58, filed a $50 million lawsuit against his ex-wife Heard, 36, over an op-ed published by The Washington Post in 2018, in which the Aquaman star stated that she was a domestic abuse survivor.

Heard did not name Depp in the article, but his lawyers have argued that it was obvious she was referring to the actor. Heard is countersuing for $100 million.

As each star took the stand at Virginia's Fairfax County Circuit Court, they made a host of allegations against one another, including drug and alcohol use, explosive confrontations, and even a claim that Heard defecated on the couple's bed.

Depp and Heard, whose divorce was finalized in 2017, have also accused one another of domestic abuse. Both have denied the allegations made against them.

With the trial having come to an end on May 27, members of the jury have since been deliberating before delivering a verdict that will greatly impact each star.

During closing statements, Heard's attorney, Benjamin Rottenborn, referring to the ex-couple's conflicting accounts of how Depp ended up with a severed finger, offered a hypothetical that rattled some observers.

"Amber could have chopped it off with an axe and it has nothing to do with whether or not Mr. Depp abused her," he said, adding, "She didn't but it doesn't matter."

He insisted that only one of Heard's abuse claims needed to be true for her to win the case. He added that this can take the form of mental, psychological or financial abuse, and that jurors don't necessarily need to believe that physical abuse occurred.

Some Depp fans took this as an implication that Heard wasn't telling the truth throughout her testimony. "Rottenborn is basically saying Amber Heard may have lied about the majority of her abuse accusations against Johnny Depp...but messages are still abuse so 'samesies'?" Twitter user @ThatBrianFella wrote.

Other fans are arguing that Heard has credibility issues which were laid bare in past legal battles. One Twitter user on Tuesday shared snippets of a draft of the judgement in the former couple's previous U.K. court battle, which came about when Depp sued The Sun for calling him a "wife-beater" in reference to Heard's domestic abuse allegations. Depp lost the trial back in 2020.

However, one fan noted that in the draft, Judge Andrew Nicol, when ruling against Depp, accepted that Heard had lied under oath during a previous legal issue in Australia.

While still married to Depp, Heard navigated a court battle with Australian authorities for taking the couple's two pet dogs into the country in May 2015 without declaring them. The trial concluded with Heard avoiding conviction.

Heard had been charged with making a false statement on her immigration card. The Magic Mike XXL star checked "no" to the question of importing anything into the country that ought to have been declared. Foreign pets must be quarantined for 10 days when first brought into the country.

She said it was a misunderstanding as she had assumed her husband's assistants had arranged the terriers' passage into the country, where Depp had been shooting Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

Discussing the Australian case, the judge overseeing the U.K. trial surmised: "The offence to which Ms. Heard pleaded guilty involved knowingly making a false statement.

"As [Australian Judge Bernadette Callaghan] said, that was not a trivial offence, but its nature is so far removed from the evidence which Ms. Heard gave in this trial that its relevance for her credibility is marginal at most."

Another snippet of the ruling shared on Twitter read that Depp's former estate manager Kevin Murphy "said that he made his untrue statement for the Australian proceedings because of pressure that Ms. Heard put him under.

"He said that when he expressed discomfort at making a false statement Ms. Heard had said to him, 'Well I want your help on this.... I wouldn't want you to have a problem with your job.'"

Amid the subsequent discussion on social media, it was pointed out that while Heard may stand accused of not telling the truth in a previous case, it was still separate to the one being ruled on at the time.

Cornell Law School notes that when it comes to a witness's credibility, an attorney can "show jurors a witness is not credible by showing: 1) inconsistent statements, 2) reputation for untruthfulness, 3) defects in perception, 4) prior convictions that show dishonesty or untruthfulness, and 5) bias."

A spokesperson for Australia's Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (DAWE) told Newsweek in May that investigations are ongoing over allegations that Heard lied under oath.

The DAWE representative said that the department was continuing to look into "allegations of perjury by Ms. Heard during court proceedings for the 2015 illegal importation of (her) two dogs into Australia."

Newsweek has contacted a representative of Heard for comment.

The perjury investigation was initially revealed in October 2021, with a representative for DAWE telling E! News that "the department is seeking to obtain witness statements and once obtained, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions will consider whether the evidence is sufficient to warrant pursuance of the matter."

An attorney for Heard criticized the investigation, telling the outlet at the time: "It is truly inconceivable, and we are confident it is not true, that either the Australian Government, or the FBI, would embrace a policy of further pursuing and victimizing a person who has already been adjudicated to be the victim of domestic violence."

Reacting to Rottenborn's statements, Depp's attorney, Camille Vasquez, told jurors: "They've talked about the importance of free speech," adding that she agreed with that.

"The First Amendment doesn't protect lies that hurt and defame people, and there's a difference," Vasquez went on. "Ms. Heard has no right to tell the world that Mr. Depp physically or sexually assaulted her when it isn't true."

As she took the stand in the lead-up to trial's conclusion, Heard spoke of the op-ed that sparked this lawsuit in the beginning, stating to the jury that she wrote the piece because of her ex-husband's "power."

"I know so many people will come out and saw whatever for him that's his power," Heard said. "That's why I wrote the op-ed. I was speaking to that phenomenon."

David Lin, an attorney in New York who specializes in defamation law, believes that Heard's motives for writing the piece are more important than whether she actually wrote it or not.

"In order for Johnny to win his case, he needs to prove that Amber wrote the op-ed, that her statements were false and were about him, and that they injured his reputation," Lin previously told Newsweek.

Lin explained that because Depp is a public figure, his team will also need to show that Heard knew the statements were false when she made them, or that she "recklessly disregarded whether they were true or false."

"If Amber was jealous of Johnny's power, that can be important evidence to bolster the idea that she knew her statements were false but made them anyway," Lin continued. "But jealousy, spite or ill will by itself usually isn't enough to show liability.

"If, however, Johnny wins the case, then Amber's motives for making the statement (including a desire to undermine his power) can be extremely relevant for an award of punitive damages."

Jury deliberation continues.