The jurors in Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s bombshell defamation trial came back with a question Tuesday as they continued deliberations in the high-profile case.
The seven-person panel was confused about one of eight questions it needs to answer as it determines whether Heard defamed her ex-husband when she wrote a Washington Post op-ed in 2018 describing herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.”
The question was whether they found the headline of the op-ed — which read, “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath” — to be false.
Judge Penney Azcarate told the Fairfax, Virginia, court just before 2 p.m. that the jury was asking if the question related to just the headline itself or the entire op-ed.
She said she would instruct the jurors that they were to consider the headline — and not the op-ed as a whole.
“The statement is the headline and not the entire op-ed,” the judge said.
In addition to the headline, jurors have been asked to consider whether two phrases within Heard’s op-ed defamed the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star.
In the first passage of her op-ed, Heard wrote that “two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath.”
In the second passage, the “Aquaman” actress wrote, “I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.”
According to the verdict form given to jurors, the jury has to consider whether the headline and passages were about Depp, if they are false, whether each of them has a “defamatory implication” and whether Heard intended for it to smear her ex-husband.
Jurors also have to weigh if Heard acted with “actual malice,” which requires “clear and convincing evidence” that she either knew what she was writing was false or that she acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
The jury must come to a unanimous decision for a verdict in Depp’s $50 million case.
Texas civil lawyer Katherine Lizardo said it was “too early to infer” which way the jury was leaning, but the question appeared to be advantageous towards Depp’s case.
