The jury of the trial between actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard will return to deliberations on Tuesday, in a case that has generated a great deal of attention in the media and online.
The seven-person civil jury began deliberations on May 27 after a six-week trial in which Depp sued Heard for $ 50 million in a Virginia court for allegedly defaming him in a Washington article. Post of 2018.
Heard has claimed she is a survivor of domestic abuse and has filed a $ 100 million lawsuit after Depp’s lawyer called her allegations a hoax.
Depp denies that he ever hit Heard and has claimed that he was the one who physically assaulted him on several occasions.
“I don’t think the jury is going to dwell on what I think is the easiest part of the case, which is whether Johnny Depp or Amber Heard will be successful or not,” Canadian legal analyst Ari Goldkind told CTVNews.ca an email. Monday.
“I think the jury, the seven of them, will make a decision quickly on the presentation that they consider most convincing, most credible and most credible, and that has nothing to do with social media or ‘Team Depp’ or ‘Team’. ‘”
The jury will consider both Depp’s lawsuit and Heard’s counterclaim in the deliberations. Both sides are basically suing for three statements claiming they were defamatory.
Unlike a criminal trial, the standard of proof in a U.S. civil trial is not beyond any reasonable doubt, but rather about the preponderance of the evidence, or whether a statement is more likely to be true.
What could take longer for the jury to consider is what damages, if any, it will award to either party, including compensatory damages and any additional punitive damages, the latter being effectively to punish the other party for its conduct and deter others. to do the same in the future.
“But while they are deliberating, someone’s conjecture is essentially as good as mine. No one has ever made a living successfully predicting with certainty not only what a jury will do, but how long it will take to do so. “, Goldkind. dit.
Los Angeles-based legal analyst Dina Doll told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview that the jury will have plenty of time on Tuesday to deliberate.
“I think the longer we see them, the more likely they are to feel that someone has won their case because they have gotten into the issue of damages, which could extend the time the jury deliberates,” he said.
“It’s true that there’s a lot of evidence to resolve. There’s a lot of audio and video that can extend the time, even if it’s still in the early stages.”
Heard’s attorney, J. Benjamin Rottenborn, said during the final arguments that his client “wins” if Depp abused her “even once,” whether physically, emotionally, psychologically, financially, or sexual.
But Doll said that while he understands the argument on a technical level, he thinks it’s a bad argument in a practical sense.
“If you didn’t believe 90 percent of what she alleged, but you think 10 percent, then she still wins, I don’t think jurors work that way,” he said, adding that a jury can discount a whole witness if he believes that a witness materially lied.
In the event that the jury is unable to reach a unanimous decision, it is likely that the judge will give additional instructions to the jury and ask them to try again.
If the jury ends up being truly blocked, the jury will be suspended or the trial will be void.
From there, the parties will have to decide whether to re-submit their cases under a different jury.
Doll said that while this is extremely rare in civil lawsuits, this particular case could be atypical.
With files from The Associated Press