Amber Heard May Have Tried to Taint the Jury with a Rumor about Johnny Depp Shoving Kate Moss Down the Stairs, Experts Say. It Could Backfire.
Before Amber Heard stepped down from the witness stand for a weeklong break from her trial, she described an explosive fight with Johnny Depp that came after she discovered text messages that led her to believe he was being unfaithful.
She mentioned a person few expected to come up in the trial: Kate Moss.
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Brett Ward, a cochair of the matrimonial- and family-law practice at Blank Rome, said he thought the wording of Heard's name drop was too "skillful" to have happened without the help of her legal team.
By simply saying that she thought of Moss in that moment, instead of repeating the rumor, Heard was able to avoid Depp's legal team objecting to the testimony on hearsay grounds, he said.
But it "may turn out to be a mistake," Ward said, since it opens up the possibility of Depp's legal team calling Moss and other ex-girlfriends to the stand to give glowing reviews of his behavior.
...
Usually, character references like this in a trial are off limits, Ward said, because the court recognizes that just because "Depp may have treated an ex-girlfriend well, doesn't mean he didn't abuse one of them."
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"Amber Heard May Have Tried to Taint the Jury with a Rumor about Johnny Depp Shoving Kate Moss Down the Stairs, Experts Say. It Could Backfire," by Jacob Shamsian and Ashley Collman was published in Insider on May 12, 2022.