Arnon Grunberg

Appeal

Predictable

On the verdict – Jessica Winter in The New Yorker:

‘During closing arguments in the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard, one of Heard’s attorneys, Benjamin Rottenborn, described a series of Catch-22s that often ensnare women who, like Heard, accuse their partners of domestic violence. “If you didn’t take pictures, it didn’t happen; if you did take pictures, they’re fake,” he said. “If you didn’t tell your friends, you’re lying; and if you did tell your friends, they’re part of the hoax. If you didn’t seek medical treatment, you weren’t injured; if you did seek medical treatment, you’re crazy.” Rottenborn did not name a few other damned-if-you-do scenarios that were advanced by Depp’s ferociously adept legal team in the course of the six-week-long trial: if you surreptitiously record abusive behavior, you are conniving and untrustworthy; if you don’t, it didn’t happen. If you ever try to laugh off your partner’s ghastly behavior—because the “cycle of abuse” is no less terrifying for being so pathetic and predictable—then it’s not abuse. If you talk back or fight back, then you are the real abuser.
The jury was not swayed by Rottenborn’s litany, or perhaps they took it literally. On Wednesday, a panel of five men and two women found that Heard defamed Depp in an op-ed for the Post, in December, 2018, by referring to herself as “representing domestic abuse,” by stating that she witnessed “how institutions protect men accused of abuse,” and by tweeting a link to the online version of the op-ed, which carried the headline “I spoke up against sexual violence—and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.” Depp was awarded fifteen million dollars in damages; Heard reportedly plans to appeal. (The jury also found that Depp was liable for defamatory statements that his former attorney Adam Waldman had made about Heard and her friends staging a scene of alleged abuse; they awarded Heard two million in damages.)’

(…)

‘But the two most crucial strikes against Heard may have been that Azcarate permitted cameras in the courtroom and did not sequester the jury—a perfect one-two for Depp’s online brand of asymmetrical warfare. Trials are not often live-streamed in Virginia; that one centered on allegations of domestic abuse, including sexual assault, was televised is downright shocking. (Certain passages of Heard’s testimony in the U.K. case were kept confidential even in the final ruling; in the U.S., those details, as recounted by Heard in Virginia, were made available on YouTube in perpetuity.) The trial’s live stream provided hours of raw material for the fancams, TikTok lip-synchs, and cheapo animations that the pro-Depp legions used to saturate every corner of digital space. “Remember tonight do not do any outside research,” Azcarate would often admonish the jury when they took a break, revealing a naïveté about the inexorable seepage of the #JusticeForJohnny movement into every social-media feed. To “research” the case only required glancing at TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, or Instagram, where Heard was cast as the delusional harpy and Depp as the lovable rogue. (As Amanda Hess wrote, in the Times, “I did not follow the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard—it followed me.”)
In a previous piece, I wrote about how this trial evoked revenge porn in forcing the defendant to document and participate in her own spectacular humiliation in front of a judge, a jury, and the viewers at home. If Depp’s prime motivation in bringing the suit against Heard was to embarrass and stigmatize her, then he would have won, regardless of the verdict; that he became a men’s-rights folk hero in the process may have come as a surprise even to him. Others have already taken cues from his success.’

Read the article here.

So much for change.

Truth is also a question of, with whom do you sympathize.

Democracy is built on this fact.

And indeed, the thing about trials following you, i.e celeb trials, is that the miscarriage of justice will be even more likely.

And justice is local. In the UK Depp can be labeled a wife beater.
But his career is over, and his memoirs won’t be published by a major publisher, at least not in the next five years or so.

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