A juror on the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has broken his silence to reveal that her “ice cold” testimony was perceived as “crocodile tears” by the panel.
The male juror, whose name and juror number was not released, told ABC’s Good Morning America in an interview airing Thursday morning that the jury found the Aquaman actress’s emotional testimony “didn’t add up” and they believed her to be the “aggressor” in the former couple’s doomed relationship.
“The crying, the facial expressions that she had, the staring at the jury,” he said.
“All of us were very uncomfortable… she would answer one question and she would be crying and two seconds later she would turn ice cold… some of us used the expression ‘crocodile tears’.”
He added: “A lot of Amber’s story didn’t add up... The majority of the jury felt she was more the aggressor.”
The juror, one of five men on the seven-person jury that sided with Mr Depp in the bombshell case, said that the Pirates of the Caribbean actor was “more believable” and “real” when he took the stand.
“A lot of the jury felt what he was saying, at the end of the day, was more believable… he just seemed a little more real in terms of how he was responding to questions,” he said.
“His emotional state was very stable throughout.”
However, the juror said that he believes that both Mr Depp and Ms Heard were abusive towards each other but that there wasn’t enough evidence to support Ms Heard’s claims.
“What I think is truthful is that they were both abusive to each other,” he said.
“I don’t think that makes either of them right or wrong and to rise to the level of what she was claiming there wasnt enough or any evidence that really supoprted what she was saying.”
The juror also pushed back at suggestions made by Ms Heard and her team that the jury could have been swayed by social media, which was vastly skewed in Mr Depp’s favour throughout the high-profile case.
“We followed the evidence. Myself and at least two other jurors dont use Twitter or Facebook,” he said.
“Others who had it made a point not to talk about it.”
Throughout the six-week trial, a bizarre online obsession blew up on social media with TikTok users sharing edited clips of the courtroom drama, memes and conspiracies about the case.
The online frenzy was largely skewed in favour of Mr Depp, with dominant hashtags including #amberheardisaliar and #justiceforjohnnydepp.
One particularly damning part of the trial for Ms Heard was the discrepancies revealed between Ms Heard’s pledge to donate her entire $7m divorce settlement to charity and the actual payments made, he said.
When the couple’s $7m divorce settlement was reached back in August 2016, Ms Heard had said she would split the entire payout equally between the ACLU and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.
During the six-week trial, the Aquaman actress came under intense scrutiny over the pledge after it emerged that the ACLU had so far received less than half of the $3.5m payment it was promised.
Jurors were shown a clip from Ms Heard’s appearance on Danish TV show RTL Late Night in October 2018, where she said that “$7m was donated in total”.
“I split the amount between the ACLU and CHLA. ACLU is a prominent non-profit organisation in the US and they work on the behalf of marginalised communities on the ground, and in legislative reform,” she said on the show.
“I wanted nothing.”
During intense cross-examination from Mr Depp’s attorneys, Ms Heard had told the court that she uses the terms “pledged” and “donated” interchangeably.
The juror described the saga over the donations as a “fiasco for her”.
“She goes on a talk show in the UK. The video shows her sitting there telling the host that she gave all that money away and the terms she used in that vidoe clip were: ‘I gave it away’. ‘I donated it.’ ‘It’s gone,’” he said.
“But the fact is she didn’t give much of it away at all.”
Mr Depp sued his ex-wife for defamation over a 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post where she described herself as a victim of domestic abuse and spoke of feeling “the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out”.
Following an explosive six-week trial, a jury of seven determined that Ms Heard had defamed him on all three counts.
Jurors awarded Mr Depp $10m in compensatory damages and $5m in punitive damages, before Fairfax County Circuit Judge Penney Azcarate reduced the latter to the state’s legal limit of $350,000.
Ms Heard won one of her three counterclaims against her ex-husband, with the jury finding that Mr Depp – via his lawyer Adam Waldman – defamed her by branding her allegations about a 2016 incident “an ambush, a hoax”.
She was awarded $2m in compensatory damages but $0 in punitive damages, leaving the Aquaman actor $8.35m out of pocket.
The juror’s comments about the deliberations come after Ms Heard sat down for an interview with NBC’s Today Show host Savannah Guthrie where she said she still “loves” Mr Depp but fears he will try to sue her again.
Ms Heard has said she plans to appeal the verdict.
Meanwhile, Mr Depp is gearing up for another legal fight in an upcoming lawsuit brought by former colleague Gregg “Rocky” Brooks.
Mr Brooks has accused Mr Depp of punching him twice on the set of the crime drama City of Lies back in April 2017.
