Amber Heard Attorney Blames Trial Loss on Online Vitriol: How Could the Jury Not See it?

Amber Heard’s attorney Elaine Bredehoft spoke out on the blockbuster defamation trial just a day after the jury largely sided with Johnny Depp. 

Bredehoft joined Savannah Guthrie on Thursday’s edition of the Today Show, in which the attorney predicted that the online vitriol aimed at Heard throughout the trial likely impacted the jury.

Guthrie asked Bredehoft if she believed social media had an impact on the jury despite the fact that they were not supposed to be looking online throughout the case.

“They went home every night. They have families. Their families are on social media. We had a 10-day break in the middle because of the judicial conference,” Bredehoft said. “There is no way they couldn’t have been influenced by it. It was horrible. It was really, really lopsided. I was against cameras in the courtroom and I went on record with that and argued against it because of the sensitive nature of this. It made it a zoo.”

Bredehoft went on to say that Heard was “demonized here,” adding, “A number of things were allowed in this court that should not have been allowed, and it caused the jury to be confused. We weren’t allowed to tell them about the U.K. judgment.”

In 2020, Depp lost a libel case against the publisher of Britain’s The Sun, as the British High Court ruled that the claim Depp was a “wife-beater” was “substantially true.”

Bredehoft went on to say that the U.K. court determined Depp had committed at least 12 acts of violence, including sexual violence, against Heard and that there was an “enormous amount of evidence” suppressed in the Virginia case that was allowed in the U.K.

The attorney also revealed Heard “absolutely” wants to appeal the jury’s decision, adding, “She has some excellent grounds for it.”

On Wednesday, the jury in Depp and Heard’s defamation case determined Heard is guilty of defaming her former spouse in a 2018 op-ed she wrote for the Washington Post.

Depp had sued Heard for $50 million in connection with the op-ed, and the jury awarded him $15 million total.

The jury specifically awarded Depp $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million dollars in punitive damages, but because Virginia law caps punitive damages at $350,000, Depp was awarded $10.35 million total.

The jury also awarded $2 million to Heard in compensatory damages in regards to her $100 million countersuit, as the jury determined Heard had also proven elements of defamation against Depp and his former attorney Adam Waldman. 

Watch above, via NBC.