A juror is speaking out against Amber Heard, 36, after she made claims against a Fairfax jury in an interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie heavily insinuating that the jury watched or looked at social media during the trial.
"Of course, 'til my dying day, [I] will stand by every word of my testimony," she said. "I think [the] vast majority of this trial was played out on social media. I think that this trial is an example of that gone haywire, gone amok, and the jury's not immune to that."
A juror is speaking out after Heard made claims that some of them were influenced by social media coverage of the trial between her and her ex-husband Johnny Depp. Depp sued Heard for defamation after she had written an article in which she painted herself as a victim of domestic violence.
The jury awarded Depp a sum of $10 million in compensatory damages and a capped $350,000 in punitive damages. Heard received $2 million in her countersuit for compensatory damages.
The anonymous juror spoke with Good Morning America on Thursday, disputing Heard’s claims by saying that he and “at least” three others did not have Twitter accounts.
"Some people said we were bribed. That’s not true. Social media did not impact us. We followed the evidence. We didn’t take into account anything outside [the courtroom]. We only looked at the evidence," he said. "They were very serious accusations and a lot of money involved. So we weren’t taking it lightly."
“None of us were really fans of either one of them,” the juror added, saying he knew more of Depp than of Heard but hadn’t seen many of his films.
The anonymous juror, who is one of seven, said that Heard’s behavior on the stand wasn’t believable, either, and that they were “uncomfortable” with her constantly staring at them.
"The crying, the facial expressions that she had, the staring at the jury — all of us were very uncomfortable…," the juror explained. "She would answer one question and she would be crying and then two seconds later she would turn ice cold… Some of us used the expression 'crocodile tears.'"
"It didn’t come across as believable," he added. "It seemed like she was able to flip the switch on her emotions. She would answer one question and she would be crying and two seconds later she would turn ice cold. It didn’t seem natural."
He added that the jury found both Depp and Heard to be “abusive to each other” but found that Heard’s team failed to prove any physical abuse from Depp.
"They had their husband-wife arguments. They were both yelling at each other. I don’t think that makes either of them right or wrong. That’s what you do when you get into an argument, I guess. But to rise to the level of what she was claiming, there wasn’t enough or any evidence that really supported what she was saying," he said.
He said that the jury saw much of what Heard was saying while on the stand as contradictory. A majority of the jury believed Heard to be the aggressor in the relationship, and found various inconsistencies in her testimony.
"If you have a battered wife or spouse situation, why would you buy the other person, the ‘aggressor,’ a knife? If you really wanted to help Johnny Depp get off drugs, why are you taking drugs around him?" he asked.
Heard gifted Depp a very large knife as a gift despite claims that he had been abusing her shortly beforehand. The knife was inscribed with a message saying, “hasta la muerte,” meaning “until death.”
He also added that Heard’s commitment to wearing makeup on a daily basis to “hide bruises” as she and her legal team claimed did not coincide with her decision to go sans makeup the day she filed a restraining order against Depp. An ex-employee from TMZ said that in 2016 that the news agency had been given an insider tip that Heard would be filing a restraining order.
“We were trying to capture Amber leaving the courthouse and an alleged bruise on the right side of her face,” explained Morgan Tremaine, who previously worked for TMZ. “She was going to sort of stop and turn towards the camera to display the bruise on the right side of her face, the alleged bruise.”
The juror explained that the defense’s claim that Heard “never goes outside without make-up on” fell apart.
"Yet she goes to file a restraining order without make-up on. And it just so happens her publicist is with her. Those things add up and start to become hard to believe," he said.
Another blow for Heard and her legal team was when Heard made the claim that she had donated the entirety of her $7 million divorce settlement from Depp to charity, when in fact she had only donated $350,000 indirectly. Heard argued that “pledge” and “donation” were synonymous terms, even as the jury was shown a video of Heard on a Dutch talk show in which she claimed, “$7 million in total was donated. I split it between the ACLU and the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. I wanted nothing.”
“The fact is, she didn’t give much of it away at all," the juror said. "It was disingenuous."
The juror also condemned Heard’s legal team, which was composed of Ben Rottenborn from Woods Rogers Attorneys at Law in Virginia, as well as Elaine Bredehoft and Adam Nadelhaft from Charlson Bredehoft Cogen Brown & Nadelhaft, also in Virginia.
"They would cut people off in cross because they wanted one specific answer without context. They were forcing people to just answer a very narrow question... which was obvious," he said. "She needs better advice.”