The trial will restart on monday, 16th
Johnny Depp’s defamation trial is on a scheduled weeklong break after the world listened to a parade of witnesses, including Amber Heard, testify in recent days.
Gutenplan, who is not involved in the Depp-Heard proceedings in Fairfax, Virginia, maintained the weeklong adjournment couldn’t have come at a better time for Depp and his legal team given the wild details that have emerged. It gives Depp's team ample time to prepare cross-examination of Heard, 36.
"They're going to poke every little hole in her testimony that they can, and they're going to try to create so many inconsistencies that they're going to (tell) the jury, 'If she can lie to you and misrepresent or change her story in these small ways, the entire testimony is polluted. You can't possibly believe any of it,'" Gutenplan added.
"Their [Depp team's] strategy has been, as you've seen in open court, to sling as much mud as possible, to discredit Ms. Heard as much as possible, and that'll be what the cross-examination will focus on,"
"That's what they're going to ask the jury to believe. They're going to make these tiny pinprick holes in the testimony and then to try to pull those apart as big as they can and hope that jurors will frankly think she was just acting. Which is another challenge to the case is we're dealing with two people who play roles for a living. So, 'Where does the truth start and end?' becomes a lot more difficult."
"[Heard’s] direct testimony the last day and a half in court I found it to be compelling," Gutenplan said last week. "Obviously, she was giving repeated details and dates and instances and events and purported witnesses who can corroborate those events and fairly significant, obscene instances of abuse.
"I mean, we're talking about serious stuff here. Not that all domestic abuse or abuse of any kind isn't serious. But I think at least her story certainly rises to another level."
"So let's remember the burden of proof here," Gutenplan added. "Johnny is the plaintiff. He has to prove by a preponderance of the evidence and convince the jurors that literally none of this happened. It's one thing if the jurors think that Ms. Heard is embellishing a piece of this or maybe this didn't quite happen the way that it happened. But to win, he would have to convince a jury that it's all fabricated, that it's all made up."
A spokesperson for Depp said in a statement that Heard "did indeed deliver the performance of her life in her direct examination."
"While Ms. Heard’s stories have continued to grow new and convenient details, Mr. Depp's recollections have remained exactly the same throughout the six painful years since her first allegations were made," the spokesperson said. "His truth — the truth — is the same no matter the environment in which it is has been presented. The upcoming cross-examination from Mr. Depp’s team will be most telling and will certainly highlight the many fallacies Ms. Heard has now attempted to pass off as fact throughout her convoluted testimony."
A cross-examination of Heard’s claims will start when court reconvenes May 16 at 9 a.m. ET.