Hollywood star Johnny Depp’s libel claim against the publisher of The Sun – which called him a ‘wife beater’ over allegations of domestic violence made by his ex-wife Amber Heard – was arguably the biggest English libel trial of the 21st century.

The four-week hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice, unsurprisingly, attracted the world’s media as well as legions of Depp’s fans, some of who dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow or Edward Scissorhands as they proclaimed his innocence and heckled Heard on her way in to court.

Dozens of journalists (myself included) heard some of the most bizarre evidence ever given at the High Court, featuring heavy drinking and drug use, namechecks for Keith Richards, Hunter S. Thompson and Elon Musk and, infamously, the question of who defecated in the couple’s bed.

Ultimately, Mr Justice Nicol ruled in November 2020 that the description of Depp as a wife beater was ‘substantially true’, prompting Depp to resign from his role in the lucrative Harry Potter spin-off franchise. An application for permission to appeal was refused.

But, this week, the former Pirates of the Caribbean star is giving evidence again – this time in Virginia in a $50m defamation claim against Heard (who is counterclaiming for $100m) over an op-ed for The Washington Post in which she described herself as ‘a public figure representing domestic abuse’.

Having sat through every day of the previous trial in my previous job at the Press Association, when we filed around 10,000 words a day for the UK’s media, it is slightly strange to watch the same witnesses give similar evidence from more than 3,000 miles away – and all live on TV.

At the RCJ, the case was held in Court 13 with four ‘overspill’ courts for the press and public, partly as a result of the pandemic, so that those watching could only see the lawyer or witness who was speaking at any one time via a low-resolution camera which had been hastily installed in court.

In the US, however, broadcasting court proceedings (even murder trials) is the norm, meaning I have now seen more of Depp and Heard actually in court than I did when they were only 50 yards away.

The most significant difference between the trials, though, is the law: Depp has to surmount the formidable hurdle of the First Amendment and demonstrate ‘actual malice’ on Heard’s part. And, unlike in London nowadays the actor has something of a wildcard in that a jury of his peers will ultimately decide the case.

Another big difference, from journalists’ point of view at least, is access to court material: in the early days of the High Court trial, we had to battle lawyers for documents, as well as the videos and audio clips played in court. (By the end, we had too much – including a rather unsavoury photo of the ‘faeces on the bed’, so prominent in evidence that it got its own heading in the final judgment.) American court documents are much easier to obtain, even from England.

But some things remain the same: Depp has instructed Brown Rudnick to run his case in Virginia, the same firm whose English lawyers accidentally sent 70,000 of his text messages to the defence ahead of the trial before they were replaced by Schillings.

And, as before, Depp’s dedicated followers have descended on the court in Fairfax County to support their hero, leading Judge Penney Azcarate to order on pain of contempt that ‘there will be no overnight camping on courthouse grounds’.

Depp told the jury this week that he ‘lost’ as soon as Heard’s allegations were made public ‘no matter the outcome of this trial’. With his and Heard’s lives being raked over in court once more, this time live before the entire world, it is difficult to see who wins – apart from, of course, the press and the pair’s lawyers.

 

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