The Trial
The horrible discourse and why it's all important
I didn’t ever particularly want to talk about the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial. On the surface, it felt overblown and annoyingly in the public eye for something that’s topic is so deeply personal.
But as it went on, and as I saw how people were reacting to it, something just felt wrong.
If you have somehow missed the news, it goes like this: Depp was awarded $15 million in damages, as the court decided he was defamed by Heard, who wrote about how Depp allegedly abused her for years. The courts also awarded Heard $2 million for her countersuing of Depp.
The two largest reactions I saw from this fell into two categories:
“Johnny Depp wins and I am very happy about it.”
“Thank goodness this trial is over I am sick of hearing about it.”
While I can certainly understand the latter of these, I don’t think these should be the two major takeaways from the trial. But, it has been obvious for weeks that no matter what the outcome was on Wednesday, these would be the two main parties of thought.
There is an obvious third option here, the one I have seen far less: that this Depp victory in court is a very bad thing for Heard, and a terrible precedent to set moving forward.
I want to make something clear: I did not watch this trial live. I read a lot about what was happening in the trial, but I did not watch it. If you want to discount my opinion because of that, go ahead, but I figure I should be transparent.
What I did watch happen immediately was social media videos coming out in favor of Depp. And yeah, I immediately thought this was pretty damning stuff. But from that point on, the tone of how this trial was perceived online forever changed. Almost everything I saw was about how innocent Depp is, how Heard is manipulative, how every little detail in how she reacted to things being said made her the worst human being on the planet.
What I didn’t hear as much about was Heard’s extremely solid evidence of how abusive Depp was. How multiple sources have testified of this abuse. How a juror wasn’t thrown out despite showing a clear bias against Heard over a month ago. How there are plenty of awful texts by Depp that sure seem to be coming right after he blew up at her.
All of those links come from Michael Hobbes because he is one of the few people that came onto my feed being vocally in this third line of thinking.
Of course, just because Depp was abusive doesn’t mean that Heard was not abusive back. This is true, and it seems that Heard was at least retaliatory. But I also think that it’s important to understand what this trial is about, and why that shouldn’t just make her the villain.
The trial is happening because Depp claimed that Heard made defamatory statements about him when she wrote about her alleged abuse in the Washington Post, a story that does not name Depp once. To defame someone, the statements have to be false, and they have to have clear malicious intent. For the jury to decide that Heard owes Depp this money is to say that she lied. It’s to say that her piece about experiencing domestic abuse is untrue. That is an unbelievably dangerous precedent to come to when the facts of the case seem to say otherwise.
It also seems like a good time to bring up that the jury of this case was not sequestered, meaning they were not isolated from the viral videos, the memes, the live streams by major Twitch names using abuse claims for views. They were not hidden from the thousands upon thousands of pieces circulating social media so heavily in favor of Depp. Even if they wouldn’t admit it, it’s almost impossible to think that it all played no factor in the ultimate decision.
This leads to why I had trouble with the second major thought I saw, the “who cares, I’m happy this is finally over” crowd. Was I annoyed by a lot of what I saw on Twitter every day about this trial? Absolutely. But for it to end with a result like this, after all the supposed “progress” in the #MeToo movement, is significant. The masses decided to latch on to Depp, to believe almost strictly what Depp said, and to believe that Heard lied in an attempt to sink his career.
Sure, there was some nuance here and there, but not from most people I saw reacting to it. When I went to play trivia at a bar last night, someone’s team name was mocking Heard. When I search Johnny Depp on Twitter, the results are half news stories and half pure jubilation that he won.
What happened here? What is the precedent being set here that Depp is being paraded around as a hero after this?
And none of this post is to say that Heard is completely innocent either, but why does she have to be? This Op-Ed by Lexi McMenamin says it better than I can and you should read it in full, but this quote in particular stands out for me:
“Despite what seemed like progress in the #MeToo era, the way this trial has been picked apart online, the ridicule and vitriol Heard has been subjected to, and the utter disdain for a woman who claims a powerful man abused her, all seem proof that we never progressed past the idea of good vs. bad, of perfect victim vs. evil abuser. As we continue to reinforce that narrative, that there’s no room for nuance for assault victims, it’s the abusers who have everything to gain.”
People largely have treated this trial like a sporting event, like some sort of theatrical arc where the good guy is going to take down the evil woman who almost had everyone fooled.
Life doesn’t work that way, and the trial shouldn’t have gone that way. In fact it didn’t: Depp still has to pay $2 million. Still, it’s clear who “won” in this trial that took the world by storm in all of the worst ways.
It’s done, but the result of this is not over with.
Donate, if you are able, to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Editor’s Note: I previously said that Heard wrote her story of abuse in the New York Times, when it was really the Washington Post. That was changed here but went out incorrectly in the email.