Johnny Depp had a “connection with the jury” that was key to his decisive legal victory over ex-wife Amber Heard, his now-internet-famous attorney Camille Vasquez said Wednesday on “Good Morning America.”
Vasquez and her co-counsel Ben Chew emphasized to George Stephanopoulos that the material facts and Amber Heard’s own words also weighed heavily in Depp’s favor.
“Focusing on the facts and the evidence,” Vasquez said, “and allowing Johnny Depp to speak the truth for the first time. It was six years in the making … and I think he was able to connect with the jury and the public.”
Chew said he was the one who gave Depp the news that a jury had awarded him $15 million in compensatory and punitive damages for defamation. Depp was in London when the six-week trial came to its conclusion last week.
“He was over the moon,” Chew said. “It was like the weight of the world had been taken off his shoulders … finally, after six years, he got his life back.”
Stephanopoulos asked whether social media – vitriol toward Heard, in particular – had played a role in the verdict, as Heard’s team suggested. Chew brushed that notion aside, noting that the jury was instructed nightly to keep it clean, and took its duty very seriously.
“Social media played no role whatsoever,” Chew said. “This was a decision made by a jury on evidence by both sides, and it was overwhelmingly in Johnny’s favor.”
Vasquez also dismissed the idea that Depp’s victory was a setback for women or the #MeToo movement, and said they encourage any victims of abuse to come forward.
“Domestic violence does not have a gender,” she said.
Watch the interview above.
