A day after Johnny Depp largely won his defamation lawsuit against Amber Heard, Hurd’s attorney general said “one-sided” social media posts about the trial turned the courtroom into a “zoo” and influenced the jury’s verdict.
Speaking to NBC, Elaine Bredehoft said the verdict had sent a “terrible message”, adding that she believed the seven-member jury was unable to escape the social media craze that engulfed the six-week trial.
“How can you [escape it]? ” she asked. “They came home every night. They have families. Families are on social networks. We had a 10-day break in the middle because of the court conference. There’s no way they weren’t affected by it.
“It’s like the Roman Colosseum, you know?” How they viewed this whole case. I was against the cameras in the courtroom and I entered into a protocol with that and I disputed that because of the sensitive nature of it. But that made it a zoo. “
Jurors found Depp and Hurd slandered. But they were largely in Depp’s favor, with all three of his claims backed by one of Hurd’s three demands. The parties were awarded $ 10.35 million and $ 2 million, respectively.
Hurd’s lawyers said they would appeal.
The outrage created on Thursday. Tarana Burke, co-founder of the #MeToo movement, said in a statement: “The way #MeToo was co-opted and manipulated during the Johnny Depp trial against Amber Heard is a toxic accident and one of the biggest slanders of the movement we have ever been. have seen. “
Bredehoft said Hurd told her she felt she had misled the women.
“One of the first things she said was, ‘I’m so sorry for all these women there. This is an obstacle for all women in and out of the courtroom. She feels the weight of it. “
Some experts in the field of sexual and domestic violence said that the sentence should be a signal to wake up women, to redouble their efforts in a system that does not guarantee equal protection.
“It’s a symptom of a culture that has oppressed women since its inception,” Wendy Murphy, a former sexual crimes prosecutor, told the Guardian. “This is proof that women need full equality according to the law in this country. Without him, we receive absurd sentences like this. “
Murphy said Hurd was denied equal protection because the U.S. Constitution denied it to women from 1868, when the 14th Amendment guaranteed “equal protection of the law,” without explicitly mentioning women. It was not until 1971 that the Supreme Court’s decision, Reid v. Reid, found that the different treatment of men and women was unconstitutional.
“Without constitutional equality, laws should not be applied equally on behalf of any woman in any court,” Murphy said. “But the idea that this sentence will take us back, that women will be silent, women are scared, is nonsense.
“Women will respond with revenge. We will get up, we will talk, we will organize and we will respond. ”
Lisa Bloom, a high-profile lawyer, said one of the allegations against Hurd was in the headline of the Washington Post article, “I spoke out against sexual violence” and faced the wrath of our culture. That needs to change, ”Hurd said.
Murphy said the “irrational nature” of the verdict – in which jurors respected Hurd’s allegation that Depp slandered her when his lawyer described her allegation of domestic violence as “ambush, fraud” – would help with any appeal.
“It may have been an irrational jury,” she said, “but it’s not uncommon for a jury to come up with a verdict in which they feel they give little to both sides.
“But the fact that the jury [first] returned without any damage and were sent back to the jury room is strong proof that this is just a dumb jury. It doesn’t matter what they’re hooked on. The question is why the jury could not be rational?
“Why couldn’t they see exactly what was in front of them and instead be subjected to tactics to distort Depp’s defense, which allowed the evidence to slip through?”
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