Transcription
Morning. There you go. There you go. I think so. Good. Nope. You had it for a second. Good morning. Thank you. Let's try that again. Good morning.
On May 27th, 2016, Ms. Heard walked into a courthouse in Los Angeles, California, to get a no-notice, ex-parte restraining order against Mr. Depp. And in doing so, ruined his life by falsely telling the world that she was a survivor of domestic abuse at the hands of Mr. Depp. Today, on May 27th, 2022, exactly six years later, we ask you to give Mr. Depp his life back by telling the world that Mr. Depp is not the abuser. Ms. Heard said he is, and hold Ms. Heard accountable for her lies.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as you probably know by now, my name is Camille Vasquez. On behalf of Mr. Depp and all my colleagues at Brown Rudnick, I want to thank you deeply for your time and your service over these last seven weeks. We understand that it probably has not been convenient for you to be here every day, and we are so grateful for your time and careful consideration of the evidence as you deliberate. After weeks of sitting in this courtroom, listening to testimony and looking at evidence, now it's time for you, the jury, to come to a decision. You have been entrusted with a serious task. What is at stake in this trial is a man's good name. Even more than that, what is at stake at this trial is a man's life. The life that he lost when he was accused of a heinous crime, and the life he could live when he has finally vindicated.
Exactly six years ago today, on May 27th, 2016, Ms. Heard walked into court and filed a false report of domestic abuse against her husband of 15 months, Johnny Depp. The scene was a setup. She tipped off the paparazzi so they would be waiting. They knew exactly where she would pause, which side of her face to photograph, and the photos captured what she wanted them to see: the image of a battered woman. What the paparazzi did not know is that the dark mark on her face mysteriously appeared six days after last seeing Mr. Depp. It was a lie. She knew it. Mr. Depp knew it. And the multiple witnesses you heard from who saw her that week of May 21st, 2016, also knew it. But the world only saw what she wanted them to see.
Okay. Two years later, when promoting the biggest role of her career until this trial, Ms. Heard presented herself to the world as a public figure representing domestic abuse. The headline of the op-ed featured the term "sexual violence," even though she had never before accused her ex-husband of such a heinous crime. Ms. Heard and her lawyers love to remind you of how the op-ed did not mention Mr. Depp by name, but Ms. Heard made sure that there would be no mistake about who she was referring to. She inserted, "Two years ago, said the world would remember the photo of a battered woman, the mark on her face standing outside the courthouse." And they would once again see Mr. Depp as the villain, this time in full swing of the #MeToo movement.
But what was happening behind closed doors was quite different from what Ms. Heard presented to the world. The exact opposite, in fact. There is, there is an abuser in this courtroom, but it is not Mr. Depp. And there is a victim of domestic abuse in this courtroom, but it is not Ms. Heard. The evidence presented at this trial has shown that Ms. Heard is, in fact, the abuser, and Mr. Depp, the abused. As you heard from Mr. Depp and multiple other witnesses that testified under oath at this trial, Mr. Depp experienced persistent verbal, physical, and emotional abuse by Ms. Heard during their relationship. And when their relationship was over, Ms. Heard inflicted the greatest and cruelest injury of all. She publicly and falsely named Mr. Depp as the abuser. Ms. Heard never thought she would be held accountable. Never thought that she would have to face her abuser. She never thought she would never, she would have her supposed mountain of evidence vetted. She never thought that Mr. Depp would tell you, the jury, and the world that he was the real victim of domestic abuse. She said it in her own words. "Me, tell the world, Johnny. Tell them, Johnny." Yes, I joined up, man. I'm, I'm a victim of tonight. You know, it's a fair fight. It seems how many people believed or signs of people started this case.
Mr. Chu and I stood before you to give you our opening statements on behalf of Mr. Depp. During that statement, we made promises to you about what the evidence would ultimately show. At the end of this trial, we've kept those promises. One of those promises we made was that you would come to understand who Ms. Heard is. That she is a deeply troubled person, violently afraid of abandonment, desperate for attention and approval. And in her relationship with Mr. Depp, she was violent, she was abusive, and she was cruel.
You heard from Dr. Shannon Kirby, who explained that Ms. Heard suffers from borderline personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder. These are disorders that are characterized by anger, sometimes uncontrollable and explosive anger, and a powerful, sometimes desperate need for attention, acceptance, and approval. Fear of abandonment is the deepest fear a person with these disorders will suffer from. Dramatically fluctuating moods, and can sometimes be violent and aggressive. They can also be charming and likable, but they can be incredibly manipulative and wild. An emotional rollercoaster with wild swings from idolizing their partner to devaluing him. In fact, you saw that when she completed testing with her own forensic psychology expert, Dr. Don Hughes. Ms. Heard self-reported that she felt like she had three or four different personalities, and that sometimes her temper would explode, and she completely lose control.
You heard from multiple witnesses that Ms. Heard can be very pleasant, even charming. But you also heard from multiple witnesses, and in audio recordings, I've heard Ms. Heard that she can be incredibly aggressive, violent, and cruel. You heard that even from her former assistant, Kate James. Miss James testified that Ms. Heard would scream, yell, and send her barrages of text messages. In fact, Ms. Heard testified that Ms. James testified that Ms. Heard literally spat in her face. You heard from Ms. Heard's former best friend, Rocky Pennington, that Ms. Heard once hit her when Miss Pennington did not do her best to meet Ms. Heard's needs. You also heard from Beverly Leonard that she once witnessed Ms. Heard assault her then-partner in Seattle airport in 2009. And you heard from Mr. Depp that Ms. Heard used her sister, Whitney, as a punching bag, literally and figuratively.
You also heard overwhelming evidence from Mr. Depp and the people that were around him and Ms. Heard during the relationship that Mr. Depp suffered persistent verbal and physical abuse at the hands of Ms. Heard. You've heard evidence from Dr. Curry and the fact witnesses at this trial that Ms. Heard's deepest fear is one of abandonment, being left by Mr. Depp. Mr. Depp's greatest crime, in her mind, the fault she confronts him with time and time again, is that he splits. He leaves the fight, especially when Ms. Heard gets physical, and she couldn't stand it when he did. You heard from Ms. Heard yourselves in audio recordings how upsetting it was to her when Mr. Depp would split. "Anytime anything goes wrong, I feel like it's your first thing. It's unnecessary. It's not always, uh, you're splitting because there's blows or because there's yelling or anything. You split many, most times when I'm still speaking in this volume, and nothing has been thrown or hit or anything. You split."
You saw the barrage of text messages she would send when he would leave, calling him a monster for doing so. You heard from witnesses like Travis McGivern, Tara Roberts, and Debbie Lloyd that Ms. Heard would claw Mr. Depp, block the elevator, throw a punch when Mr. Depp tried to separate himself from the fight. And you heard from Mr. Depp and Mrs. Couple's therapist, Dr. Anderson, that Ms. Heard reported that when Mr. Depp would leave to de-escalate a fight, she would strike him to keep him there, like she would rather be in a fight than have him leave.
You heard from Mr. Depp about how often Ms. Heard would berate him, insult him, and physically attack him, including one of the most serious occasions when Ms. Heard threw a vodka bottle at Mr. Depp, severely injuring his finger, and then put a cigarette out on his face. You heard from Mr. Depp that this whole incident in Australia started because Ms. Heard was enraged that Mr. Depp wanted a post-nuptial agreement, and she wasn't in his will. Just a month after getting married, when her husband was seriously injured and bleeding from a partially amputated finger, what did Ms. Heard do? She pursued him. She kept coming after him because that's what she does. She wouldn't stop. "Just get out of a bad situation that's happening before it gets worse."
"In Australia, when we had the big fight where I lost and took my finger, at least five bathrooms and two and two bedrooms, I went to two, two, avoid talking to me, to escape the fight. Don't escape the fight, you escape the solution. You escape the solutions. Escape figuring it out. We cannot work it out if you run away to the bathroom every time." You heard Mr. Depp testify he went through something like a nervous breakdown that day, and he wrote a lot of things on mirrors and other places. Again, what did Ms. Heard do? As her husband was bleeding from a serious injury, she wrote snarky messages right back to him. She denied it under oath to you, but the evidence you saw speaks for itself.
You heard from Mr. Depp's security, Sean Bett, who was aware of constant arguing and bickering. He witnessed Ms. Heard calling Mr. Depp "fat ass fuck you, Johnny." Mr. Bett testified that he saw and documented injuries on Mr. Depp: a swollen eyelid in March of 2015, cuts on his nose, scratched marks on his chin in December of 2015. And you heard from Travis McGivern, who testified that Ms. Heard called Mr. Depp names like "washed up fucking cunt" and worst of all, "a fucking deadbeat dad." Ms. Heard would take the low blows and hit him where it hurts: his children. Mr. McGivern told you that on March 23rd, 2015, Ms. Heard threw things at Mr. Depp, spat at him, and ultimately punched him in the face, leaving him with a shiner.
You heard testimony from Malcolm Connolly, another security member, who testified he saw Ms. Heard throw things at Mr. Depp: a cigarette lighter on a plane, a soda can from upstairs at the Eastern Columbia Building. He never saw marks on Ms. Heard, but he saw marks on Mr. Depp: scratches, bruises on his left eye, scratches on his left ear, and he took pictures documenting injuries like this one. You also heard from Tara Roberts, a manager at Mr. Depp's island, who witnessed Ms. Heard telling Mr. Depp that he was washed up and would die fat and lonely. You also heard from Miss Roberts that she witnessed Ms. Heard clawing and grabbing at Mr. Depp, grabbing his hair, trying to pull him back to her, and Mr. Depp had a visible injury to his nose on that occasion.
Most importantly, you heard from Ms. Heard yourselves on multiple audio recordings admitting to being physically violent with Mr. Depp. You heard Ms. Heard admit to hitting Mr. Depp. "And then you fucking clock." "I, I remember hating you as a response to the door thing." "Hmm. And I'm really sorry about hitting you with the door. Without hitting your head, I did not mean to." "Nor you didn't mean to hit me in the head with the door, but you meant to." "I didn't punch me in the jaw. I meant to hit you." "And I, I did not do this thing with the door." "I do remember. I did mean to hit you." "But you didn't mean the door?" "No." "God, no." "I didn't." "Okay. I'm sorry I hit you. I didn't mean to hit you, but it was in response." "I just reacted." "In response to my foot. I just reacted."
You heard her admit it again and claimed Mr. Depp was a baby for complaining about the abuse. "You, by the way, you, I'm sorry that I, I, uh, uh, hit you across the face in a proper slap, but I was hitting you. It was not punching you, babe. You're not punched. Don't tell me what it feels like to be punched." "You know, even a lot of flies have been around a long time. I know." "Yeah, you didn't get punched. You got hit." "I'm sorry I hit you like this, but I did not punch you. I did not fucking deck you. I fucking was hitting you. I don't know what the promotion of my actual hand was, but you're fine. I did not hurt you. I did not punch you. I was hitting you." "How? What am I supposed to do? Do this? I'm not sitting here bitching about it, am I? You are. That's the difference between me and you." "You're fucking baby." "Physical fights?" "I did start a physical fight." "Yes, you did. She did the right thing. The big thing. The, you know what, you're admirable."
Take a minute to really think about what you just heard there. Quote, "I'm sorry that I didn't hit you across the face in a proper slap, but I was hitting you. I was not punching you, babe. You're not punched." Imagine that was Mr. Depp saying that to Ms. Heard on that recording. Let's play one more.
[Laughter]
Okay. No, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure she's granny performances.
[Laughter]
[Music]
Go. Come on. Go be a real married man who deals your shit the way that a man does. Go run to the next house. Every man does. Yeah. This is the real Ms. Heard. The one in the audio recordings, not the one you saw in this courtroom. What you didn't hear on a single recording you heard in this case, and there were many played by both parties, is Mr. Depp ever admitting to hitting, punching, or kicking Ms. Heard. You didn't hear it. It doesn't exist. It didn't happen. And despite the fact that Mr. Depp and Ms. Heard are heard discussing many of the alleged incidents you've heard about at this trial, like Australia and the Bahamas, you never heard Ms. Heard accuse Mr. Depp of sexual assault. Unlike Mr. Depp, who you heard admit to and own up to his past mistakes and his struggles, particularly with drugs and alcohol, Ms. Heard will not admit that she has never done that. She has ever done anything wrong, but she cannot deny what you heard on those recordings.
As much as Ms. Heard and her lawyers have tried to make this case about Mr. Depp's language, it is Ms. Heard that repeatedly admits to violence. By April and May of 2016, Mr. Depp had reached his limit. His mother was dying. His finances were a mess. And when he showed up late to Ms. Heard's 30th birthday party because a meeting with his new business manager, Edward White, had gone late, Ms. Heard, of course, was not understanding. She was furious. You heard from Mr. Depp, both in this courtroom and on audio recordings, that Ms. Heard punched him that evening. He left with Travis McGivern, and the next morning, he learned that someone had left feces on his bed. Mr. Depp denies responsibility, but she admitted to the prank to Starling Jenkins. You heard him testify to that effect. For almost a month after that, they didn't see each other. And you heard from Mr. Depp that when his mother died on May 20th, 2016, he resolved to leave Ms. Heard. He was done. And when Ms. Heard learned that Mr. Depp was done, that she was really losing him, she went on the attack. She filed for a divorce before Mr. Depp could. Then, as you heard from Mr. Depp's divorce lawyer, Laura Wasser, Ms. Heard sent a letter demanding financial support. And when her demands weren't met, Ms. Heard struck a blow against Mr. Depp that was more damaging than any physical blow she had ever landed. When she walked into court six years ago today, on May 27th, 2016, to get a domestic violence restraining order against Mr. Depp, she did so in front of paparazzi with a mark on her face.
The evidence presented at this trial demonstrates that Ms. Heard didn't just want a divorce; she wanted to ruin him. Ms. Heard denied alerting TMZ to the TRO filing in this courtroom, but you heard testimony from Morgan Tremaine that TMZ knew to go to the courthouse, knew what side of her face the alleged bruise was on, and that Ms. Heard would pause. She would pause for paparazzi who got the photos that ended up splashed across newspapers and magazines. Mr. Depp testified that she did not personally give photographs of her apparent injuries to People magazine, but somehow these pictures that she took and maintained on her devices ended up on the cover of People magazine one month later. In the end, she walked away with seven million dollars without any tax liabilities, which she said she was donating to two charities: the ACLU and the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. The ACLU, they got less than a million dollars from her, and the Children's Hospital, they got $250,000. But that didn't stop Ms. Heard from telling the world that she donated everything because, remember, she wanted nothing, and she had donated everything. The word "donated," and that didn't stop her from testifying under the penalty of perjury that she had donated it.
Ms. Heard tried to tell you that "pledge" and "donate" mean the same thing. She claims she hasn't given the money because she was sued. But you've heard uncontested evidence that she has the money. For 13 months prior to this lawsuit being commenced by Mr. Depp, she had all the money and had month after month after month to fulfill her pledge and actually donate the money, but she didn't. She also told you that she never fulfilled the pledge because Mr. Depp sued her for defamation. That's a blatant lie. After the divorce was finalized, when she sought to initiate an arbitration against Mr. Depp for defamation, three months before the op-ed was even published and six months before Mr. Depp filed this lawsuit. Not only does this contradict Ms. Heard's excuse for not making donations, it contradicts her narrative that she just wants to move on with her life, that she just wants Mr. Depp to leave her alone. Lies. That is Ms. Heard's narrative. Lies upon lies.
"And actually, were all kinds of accusations, uh, flying your way when you said all this, and then there was a divorce settlement. You got seven million dollars. People were saying this is all about the money. But then you did something that twisted that whole argument. What did you do with that money?" "Seven million dollars in total was donated. I split it between the ACLU and Children's Hospital of Los Angeles." "ACLU is a human rights organization." "Sorry. ACLU is a prominent organization, non-profit organization." Third, and why he tries to cover it up with more lies.
So let's talk about the giant lie at the heart of this case: Ms. Heard's claim that Mr. Depp is an abusive monster and that she is a public figure representing domestic abuse. At the start of this case, Mr. Chu and I told you that you were going to hear some disturbing and graphic tales of abuse from Ms. Heard, and they were designed to shock you and overwhelm you, which you have. We told you that this would be a performance, the role of her lifetime, as a heroic survivor, survivor of brutal abuse. When Mr. Depp brought this case for defamation, Ms. Heard went all in. She spun a story of shocking, overwhelming, brutal abuse. She came into this courtroom prepared to give the performance of her life, and she gave it.
Ms. Heard's acting coach, Christina Sexton, testified that Ms. Heard has difficulty crying when she is acting. You saw it. Ms. Heard sobbing without tears while spinning elaborate, exaggerated, fantastical accounts of abuse and everything going on in her mind almost a decade prior, while enduring that abuse. It was a performance. She told you that what she thinks about, excuse me, she told you what she thinks you need to hear to convict this man as a domestic abuser and a rapist. She wants you to believe that she was abused countless times, countless times over the entire course of their relationship. But as Mr. Chu and I promised you, the evidence just does not bear that out.
Ms. Heard has told you that she has mountains of evidence of abuse, but there are no medical records reflecting she sustained any injuries from the abuse she claims. Ms. Heard had medical professionals at her disposal: Dr. Kipper, Debbie Lloyd, her own nurse, Erin Falati, and yet there's nothing. Ms. Heard took pictures all the time: pictures of Mr. Depp sleeping, pictures of cocaine, pictures of property damage, pictures of herself. And as an actress, she was photographed all the time. Where are the pictures of the horrific injuries Ms. Heard describes? Ms. Heard also took audio recordings and videos frequently. Where are the videos of Mr. Depp attacking her? Where are the audio recordings of Mr. Depp admitting to or apologizing for physical abuse? There are none.
What Ms. Heard has, and what you've seen multiple times, is a video of Mr. Depp banging some cabinets around in a kitchen, a video that, based on the testimony you heard from Morgan Tremaine, the former TMZ employee, Ms. Heard seems to have sold to TMZ right before she was deposed in connection with her divorce from Mr. Depp. Sure, Ms. Heard can point to text messages where Mr. Depp is apologizing to her, but never for violence. Ms. Heard's counsel showed you Defendant's Exhibit 325, where Mr. Depp says, "Sorry for quote, 'my behavior,' I'm a fucking savage." But this is not an apology for violence. It's an apology for deep, quote, "these heinous slinging insults." Mr. Depp is apologizing for the words he used, unlike Ms. Heard, who you heard apologizing for physical violence in multiple audio recordings. You have never heard that from Mr. Depp because he never used physical violence against Ms. Heard.
Ms. Heard told you that Mr. Depp started abusing her right from the very beginning of her relationship, starting at the beginning of 2012. But she has repeatedly testified under oath differently, to having spent a year of bliss with Mr. Depp before he ever laid a hand on her. And now, now in this courtroom, she is suddenly erased an entire year of magic. She wants you to believe that instead of hitting her after a year of magic, Mr. Depp was hitting her immediately. The good times she has testified to about repeatedly in the past apparently never happened. And with the good times erased, Ms. Heard wants you to believe that she gave Mr. Depp a big knife that said, "Hasta la Muerte," until death, to the man who supposedly would get drunk and high and beat her.
Ms. Heard admitted to you during this trial that Mr. Depp always wears big, chunky rings on every finger. According to her, he was wearing these rings when he'd slap her, hit her, punch her in the face. But you have not seen a single photograph that reflects the serious injuries Ms. Heard would have sustained if this was true. Not one. Ms. Heard testified to an incident in March 2013 when Mr. Depp supposedly hit her multiple times in the face while wearing rings, and this is what her face looked like afterwards. Ms. Heard testified to an incident in Russia where she claims Mr. Depp whacked her in the face and gave her a bloody nose. She didn't take pictures of her bloody nose, but her photograph was taken on that trip, and this is what she looked like.
Ms. Heard told you that there was an incident the night of the Met Gala in May 2014 when Mr. Depp supposedly walked Ms. Heard in the face, leaving her with a red, discolored, and swollen nose that she felt was broken. Ms. Heard didn't show you any photographs of these alleged injuries. The photographs were taken of her the following night, and there were no visible injuries to Ms. Heard's face. Ms. Heard testified that in January 2015, while she and Mr. Depp were in Tokyo, Mr. Depp knelt on her back so aggressively that she was concerned that bruises would be visible in her backless dress. Here's Ms. Heard in that backless dress. Ms. Heard testified that after an incident in December 2015, she had two black eyes, a broken nose, and chunks of hair missing. The assault was allegedly so violent that there was blood left all over the pillows, and Mr. Depp had broken the bed frame. Pictures were taken of that bed frame, and in that picture, there appears to be a pocket knife on the bed, and that picture fails to capture the bloody pillows. And here is what Ms. Heard looked like on the James Corden show the next day. Indeed, you heard from Ms. Heard's own nurse, Erin Falati, that she saw her a day or two afterwards and could not visualize the injuries Ms. Heard described. Ms. Heard did take pictures of herself after this alleged incident, but are the injuries reflected in these photographs consistent? That's the question. Are they consistent with the brutal assault and serious injuries Ms. Heard has testified to, or are these injuries more consistent with Mr. Depp's testimony that he and Ms. Heard bumped heads while he was trying to restrain Ms. Heard to keep her from attacking him?
Out of Australia, where Mr. Depp sustained the most serious injury from his relationship with Ms. Heard, Ms. Heard spun a story of horror: a three-day ordeal with drugs, with a drug-fueled Mr. Depp violently assaulting her, cutting his own finger off, dragging her through glass, and then bending her back over a counter and raping her with a whiskey bottle. Claimed that she had bruises on her face, cuts all over her arms and feet, and was bleeding from her vagina from the sexual assault. And what did Ms. Heard say she did? She went upstairs, took some sleeping pills, and went to sleep. The next morning, she took pictures of the mirrors her husband had written on in paint using his amputated finger. She took no pictures of herself, her alleged injuries, or the property damage she testified to in this courtroom.
When Malcolm Connolly, Jerry Judge, Dr. Kipper, and Nurse Debbie Lloyd arrived to extract Mr. Depp and get him medical treatment for his finger injury, you heard from Mr. Connolly, Dr. Kipper, and Miss Lloyd. All of them testified they did not observe any injuries to Ms. Heard, and no one, including Ms. Heard, testified that she sought medical treatment. You also heard from Ben King. He also saw Ms. Heard right after this alleged incident. He flew home with her to Los Angeles. He testified that Mr. Depp didn't want to leave, that she said, "I can't leave. I can't leave. It will be the end if I leave." He also testified that once they did leave for Los Angeles, Ms. Heard asked him if he ever got so mad he just lost it. When Ms. Heard arrived in Los Angeles, she saw Travis McGivern, who also testified he observed no injuries, and her personal nurse, Erin Falati, who documented no request for medical treatment and no injuries in her nursing notes from Ms. Heard. You heard from Mr. Depp's sister, Christy, that she also saw Ms. Heard when she arrived back to Los Angeles and observed no injuries on Ms. Heard. Christy testified that when she told Ms. Heard her fighting with Mr. Depp was unsustainable, Ms. Heard responded that Christy should get off her cross, that Mr. Depp liked her feisty. Ms. Heard's testimony about what occurred in Australia just doesn't add up. That's because there was a monster in that house in Australia, but it wasn't Mr. Depp. It was Ms. Heard.
Other than Ms. Heard's testimony, all the evidence you've seen in this trial shows that it was Ms. Heard who attacked and grievously wounded Mr. Depp when she threw a vodka bottle at him, severing his finger. Mr. Depp told Dr. Kipper that when Dr. Kipper arrived to treat Mr. Depp's finger, seeing the pictures of the bar area in Australia with the broken vodka bottles on the ground and trails of blood drops on the floor and a bloody tissue on the floor, you've heard from Ben King that the tip of Mr. Depp's finger was found in the same bar area. And you heard from Dr. Gilbert that the injury to Mr. Depp's finger could have been caused exactly as he described. And interestingly, you heard from Christina Sexton that Ms. Heard told her that Mr. Depp injured his finger while swinging a bottle around, not smashing a phone as Ms. Heard surmised in this courtroom, but swinging a bottle around. You also heard from Sexton that Ms. Heard first told her about the bottle rape in Australia while Ms. Sexton was at Ms. Heard's home meeting with her lawyers the day before Ms. Sexton was scheduled to be deposed in this case.
The evidence presented at this trial shows that this is not the only time that Ms. Heard disclosed of sexual assault at a convenient time for purposes of litigation. She's involved in the first time Ms. Heard claimed that Mr. Depp sexually assaulted her in the Bahamas in December 2015 was after Tara Roberts, the manager of Mr. Depp's island, submitted a sworn statement in the UK action describing the incident she testified to in this courtroom where Ms. Heard chased Mr. Depp out of the house, was yelling, and then pleading with Mr. Depp to stay while clawing at his hair and clothes and left Mr. Depp with an injury to his face. That's the first time she disclosed it, after there was contrary evidence. Mr. Depp testified about another incident just two weeks after the events in Australia where Mr. Depp supposedly attacked Ms. Heard and almost pushed her sister Whitney down the stairs. Whitney is the only witness that you heard from that backs up Ms. Heard's version of events. She's it, and the only witness other than Ms. Heard who claims to have seen Mr. Depp physically attack Ms. Heard. But just like Ms. Heard's version of the events in Australia, her testimony about the staircase incident and that of her sister Whitney's just doesn't square up with the other evidence in this trial. Their testimonies contradicted by the testimony of Travis McGivern and Debbie Lloyd, who were there that night.
Ms. Heard and Whitney testified that Mr. Depp threw a Red Bull can that hit or almost hit Miss Lloyd. Miss Lloyd testified that never happened. Mr. McGivern testified that it was Ms. Heard who threw a can at Mr. Depp. Ms. Heard testified that Whitney was between her and Mr. Depp when she punched him. Mr. McGivern testified that he was the one between Ms. Heard and Mr. Depp when Ms. Heard punched Mr. Depp. Ms. Heard testified that Mr. Depp was able to get his hands in her hair, yank her, and then hit her in the face with the cast he had on. But you heard from Miss Lloyd and Dr. Colbert, Mr. Depp's medical doctor, who treated Mr. Depp's finger injury, that Mr. Depp's finger was in a delicate state. He had a pin in his finger, a skin graft, and a soft cast that immobilized Mr. Depp's two middle fingers. And tellingly, the only picture of an injury from this incident is of Mr. Depp with a shiner.
And then we have May 21st, 2016. Ms. Heard testified that Mr. Depp threw a phone at her face causing a visible injury. Ms. Heard has shown you pictures she claims to show this injury, but these photographs are not to be trusted. You heard from Mr. Dumaister that like many of the photographs Ms. Heard has presented in this case, these photos were stored in a photo editing application, and these photos show signs of manipulation. These two photographs were taken at the exact same time and have the exact same file name, but they are visually different. One shows significantly more redness on Ms. Heard's face than the other, which doesn't show any injury at all. Ms. Heard testified the difference is explained by turning on a light, but there is no way Ms. Heard could have taken a picture, turned on a light, and then taken another picture with every hair in the exact same place within the same second. It's impossible.
Moreover, you heard from multiple witnesses, including Officer Melissa Signs, Officer Tyler Hadden, and Officer William Gatlin, Isaac Berouche, Alejandro Romero, whose statements on or after May 21st and saw no injuries to her face before she showed up to that courthouse with a mark on May 27th. And the very next day after Ms. Heard walked into court with what appeared to be a bruise on her face to obtain a domestic violence restraining order against Mr. Depp, Ms. Heard was photographed laughing with her best friend, fresh-faced, with no bruise on her face.
The mountain of evidence that Mr. Depp abused Ms. Heard is simply not there. What we have is a mountain of unproven allegations that are wild, over the top, and implausible. And you can't pick and choose which of these wild allegations to believe and which ones to disregard. You either believe all of it or none of it. Either Mr. Depp sexually assaulted Ms. Heard with a bottle in Australia, or Ms. Heard got up on that stand in front of all of you and made up that horrific tale of abuse. Either she's a victim of truly horrific abuse, or she is a woman who is willing to say absolutely anything. It is disturbing to think that Ms. Heard would make up the horrific tales of abuse that she testified to in this courtroom. But this case doesn't come down to whether you believe Ms. Heard or you believe Mr. Depp. This case comes down to whether you believe Ms. Heard or you believe Mr. Depp. Christy Dombrowski, Sean Bett, Malcolm Connolly, Travis McGivern, Starling Jenkins, Keenan Wyatt, Dr. Kipper, nurses Debbie Lloyd and Erin Falati, Tara Roberts, Ben King, Kate James, Kate Moss, Dr. Colbert, Morgan Knight, Morgan Tremaine, Officers Melissa Signs, Officers Tyler Hadden, Officer William Gatlin, and Beverly Leonard.
What Ms. Heard testified to in this courtroom is the story of far too many women. But the overwhelming evidence and weight of that evidence shows that it's not her story. It's not Ms. Heard's story. It was an act of profound cruelty, not just to Mr. Depp, but to true survivors of domestic abuse. For Ms. Heard to hold herself out as a public figure representing domestic abuse, it was false. It was defamatory, and it caused irreparable harm. And to talk more about that, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague and my friend, Mr. Chu.