Closing Argument — Defense

MR. ROTTENBORN: Thank you, Your Honor.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Good morning, everyone, They're trying to convince you that Mr. Depp has carried his burden of proof in proving that he was never abusive to Amber on even one occasion. Think about the message that Mr. Depp and his attorneys are sending to Amber, and by extension, to every victim of domestic abuse everywhere. If you didn't take pictures, it didn't happen. If you did take pictures, they're fake. If you didn't tell your friends, you're lying. And if you did tell your friends, they're part of the hoax. If you didn't seek medical treatment, you weren't injured. If you did seek medical treatment, you're crazy. If you do everything that you can to help your spouse, the person that you love, rid himself of the crushing drug and alcohol abuse that spins him into an abusive, rage-filled monster, you're a nag. And if you finally decide that enough is enough, you've had enough of the fear, enough of the pain and you have to leave to save yourself, you're a gold digger. This is the message that Mr. Depp is asking you to send. But he doesn't stop there, because in Mr.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Depp's world, you don't leave Mr. Depp. And if you do, he will start a campaign of global humiliation against you. A smear campaign that lasts to this very day. He will do everything he can to destroy your life, to destroy your career. That is what they're saying, ladies and gentlemen. And that's what they're trying to get you, the jury, to be an accomplice to. But it's not surprising because Mr. Depp cannot and will not take responsibility for his own actions. It's always someone else's fault. Just as Ms. Vasquez did and Mr. Chew did, I would like to extend my thanks to you on behalf of Amber and our whole legal team for the care and the diligence at which you have served as jurors in this matter. You've paid attention to every witness, every piece of evidence, and I can't even imagine the sacrifice that you've made in terms of time away from your friends, your family, your job, to be here on this jury.

MR. ROTTENBORN: It's a very important role you're serving, and we thank you very much. Let's pick up where we started six weeks ago in opening statements. You may remember that I asked you to keep a simple question in mind, which is "why are you here?" And much of what you've heard during the course of this trial, you don't need to make a decision on in order to return a verdict for Ms. Heard on Mr. Depp's claim of defamation. Now, we'll talk about Ms. Heard's claim of defamation against Mr. Depp, and Elaine will address most of that in a few minutes. But your key question to answer is, does the First Amendment give Ms. Heard the right to write the words that she wrote in this article on December 18th, 2018? That's the question. And you cannot simultaneously protect and uphold the First Amendment and find in favor of Johnny Depp on his claim. You simply cannot.

MR. ROTTENBORN: You have to decide, should someone be able to write an article like that in the United States of America without being sued successfully, without having to go through the hell that Ms. Heard has gone through? So let's talk about that. And to do that, we get to explain a bit more about the law that you have to follow. - This is the op-ed piece. I'm not going to read it to you again. You heard me read it to you in opening statements. And I would urge you, when you're in the deliberation room, read it. Read it again. And I know we focused on it, you know, here and there over the course of the trial, but the vast majority of this trial has not focused on these words, on this piece. This is obviously the paper edition. There's the online edition as well. Now we get a chance to discuss with you exactly what you have to find about this article. Let's try this again.

MR. ROTTENBORN: This is one of the jury instructions that you'll get, and I've been so looking forward to being able to actually explain to you -- as the 1] judge read all the instructions to you this morning, and I know it was a lot -- but we've been looking forward to being able to explain to you what you're here to decide. Because I imagine for some of the case, it's been kind of unclear what are you being asked to decide. These are the things that you have to find, and you have to answer yes. As Mr. Chew said, you have to answer yes to all of them in order to find in favor of Mr. Depp.

MR. ROTTENBORN: So you have to find that the statement was about Mr. Depp. And you can decide that in the context of the article. And I'll get to the arguments that Mr. Depp raises on that in a minute. You also have to find that the statement is false. And we're going to look at the statements here. And we're going to look at each of the three statements, and in order to win his claim, Mr. Depp has to prove every single element. And there's a concept in the jury instructions that you really didn't hear from Mr. Depp's side this morning, but you've all heard it, I'm sure, outside the courtroom, which is "burden of proof." It is Mr.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Depp's burden to prove each and every one of these elements. If he cannot, Ms. Heard wins. If he cannot prove each and every one of these elements, under the burden of proof that's applicable, Ms. Heard wins. And there's two different burdens of proof that we'll get to. For all of them except Number 7, the burden of proof is greater weight of the evidence. So you weigh the evidence, and you decide has Mr. Depp proven to you the first six elements. The seventh one, for actual malice, the clear and convincing evidence standard, we'll get to in a few minutes, But these are -- this is what he has to prove, and he cannot do that. These are the three statements. And I know you may be thinking to yourself, Don't we have to decide if Mr. Depp committed abuse? And the answer is no, you don't have to. Because these three statements, you can decide as a matter of law, or as a matter of fact, as you weigh the evidence and the fact, that they're true. So the first two statements I'm going to address together.

MR. ROTTENBORN: "Then, two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out." Number 2, "I have a rare vantage point of seeing in real time how institutions protect men accused of abuse." When you go back to the jury room to deliberate, you should feel free, like I said, to read the article and think of the article's purpose. The jury instructions also tell you to take these statements in the context of the article. Think about the purpose. The purpose of the article was to promote legislative measures designed to protect victims of domestic abuse, designed to protect people who did exactly what Ms. Heard did, to speak out: That's apparent on the face of the article. And to do that, Ms.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Heard talked about her own life experiences as someone who had obtained a TRO against Mr. Depp, someone who had accused Mr. Depp of domestic violence. Make no mistake, and Mr. Depp's side keeps trying to say that we're somehow suggesting that two years before she wrote this, that Ms. Heard hadn't had anything to do with Mr. Depp. We're not saying that. You heard Ms. Heard herself say, "Of course, two years before I wrote this article, I felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out," after she obtained a temporary restraining order against Mr. Depp, after she became a public figure representing domestic abuse. But the words that she wrote here and then chronicling her own experience after that, those words are true. Those words are true. Similarly, the rare vantage point of seeing, based on her own experiences post May 27th, 2016, how institutions protect men accused of abuse, those words are true, and the First Amendment protects Ms. Heard's rights to say them.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Now, the third statement is absolutely true as well, but we're going to take that separately because she didn't write it. Under the First Amendment, the statements have to be false in order for Mr. Depp to win. Now, Plaintiff addresses, like I said, an argument that we're not making, and as I said, we're not running from the fact that when she discussed becoming a public figure representing domestic abuse, Amber was speaking of her experiences reporting domestic abuse against On NM BW Ne experiences reporting domestic abuse against Johnny Depp. She admitted to that. But that doesn't make the article or the statements about Johnny Depp. Think about it. Think about every piece of evidence that you've heard over the last six weeks about his abuse, about their relationship. None of that is in the article. None of it. We all know that it would be a very different article if she had written about what she suffered that she'd told you about over the last six weeks. Because he knows the words are true, Mr. Depp says that the words now have a defamatory implication.

MR. ROTTENBORN: He says the statements are the same as saying Johnny Depp abused me But just because he wants to make the article about himself doesn't mean it is He has to show you that any defamatory implication was designed and intended Look at Number 4 designed and intended by Ms Heard to convey the defamatory meaning that he suggests Just because people might read the article and remember Oh yeah Amber Heard used to be married to Johnny Depp and she accused him of abuse that doesn't mean that she designed and intended defamatory implications in writing about herself And think about it If Mr Depp is right and virtually any statement that anyone could ever make about their own life that implies anything implies any involvement with any other person could be defamatory and that's clearly not what the First Amendment intends She didn't design and intend the words to be the equivalent of writing Johnny Depp abused me And you don't have to take her words for it You can take the words of Terrence Dougherty of the ACLU He said that the op-ed wasn't even Ms Heard's idea The ACLU wrote the first draft and great care was taken in drafting the article so as not to make it about Mr Depp or Ms Heard's relationship with him That's the only evidence presented about Ms Heard's motive except her statements that that was exactly what she wanted to do She wanted to talk about her experiences after Johnny Depp She wanted to own her story after Johnny Depp fit those into what other women experience what other people experience having accused someone of domestic abuse and the backlash that they suffer and then talk about legislative measures that can help protect people in those positions That's what she meant and that's what the article is about There's no hidden meaning here ladies and gentlemen This isn't a hit piece on Johnny Depp This isn't a hit piece on Johnny Depp And you can end here You can end there by saying the statements that she wrote were not false, and the First Amendment protects them. Let's talk about the headline for a minute. The headline that was published in the online version only of the article on December 18th, 2018, said, "I spoke up against sexual violence and faced our culture's wrath."

MR. ROTTENBORN: You saw her on the stand testify with your own mouth -- with her own mouth exactly, exactly what she went through for the first time in court. Because people who have suffered that, they don't want to broadcast that to the world. They want to penalize Ms. Heard for not speaking about that earlier. That's ridiculous, and it's insulting. And it's just victim blaming at its most disgusting. The only reference to sexual assault in the article, and you can read the op-ed, is sexual assault that she said she's experienced by the time she was of college age, before Mr. Depp. So there is a reference to sexual violence in that article, but it's not by Mr. Depp. And Mr. Depp can't hold her liable for a headline she didn't write that contains something that had nothing -- that was not about him. And they want you to think that she republished the headline, republished the headline by tweeting out the link to the online version. So let's look at this. This is the tweet that she sent on December 19th.

MR. ROTTENBORN: She tweeted above the article, simply saying, "Today I published this." That's what she said. She didn't add any content to it. She could have added some of the content that you've heard in this courtroom to it. She could have said, "Not only did two years ago I become a public figure representing domestic abuse, but let me tell you about the domestic abuse that I suffered." That would be adding new content. This is not adding new content. But I guess it's no surprise because this whole case is about blaming Amber Heard for things she didn't do. That's what Mr. Depp does. It's what he's always done, blame other people, refuse to take accountability. But the problem for him here is that he's running headlong into the United States Constitution which says that you cannot hold Amber Heard liable for words she didn't write or publish. But here we are. Here we are. And you can decide this case without ever wading into any of the allegations, the facts, the evidence that you've heard about the heinous abuse that Ms.

MR. ROTTENBORN: The effective coercive control, she said, was drastic, and it was composed of things such as possessive jealousy; the imbalance of power, not only in physical stature and physical size, but in where they were in their life, in their career; by intimidation. She said writing obscene messages to your partner can absolutely be intimidating behavior. She said that Mr. Depp, after reviewing the evidence, banging and throwing and hitting things in the household, that's psychological aggression. Punching a wall, throwing something, screaming, that is abuse. That's abuse, ladies and gentlemen. She said alcohol can just throw lighter fluid off a flame in a situation of domestic violence. All of these things constitute the domestic violence that Ms. Heard suffered at the hand of Mr. Depp. And he's trying to get you, to fool you, to believing that he's carried his burden of proof, that never a single time in their relationship was he in any way, physically or nonphysically, abusive to Ms. Heard.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Heard asked Johnny about his tattoo that used to say winona forever and had been changed to say wino forever and she laughed And she said And he slapped me across the face She thought it was a joke and then he did it two more times and then he said I thought I put the monster away and I've done it before That's what he said to her during that first incidence of violence But you don't just have to take what Mr Depp said in his texts We can hear through his own voice what he called Ms Heard on

MR. ROTTENBORN: We talked about the monster. You heard Mr. Depp get on the stand and say that that was Ms. Heard's term, that she made 1] it up, that was what she used to refer to him when she was nagging him because she didn't want him to have a good time. She didn't want him to have a beer once in a while is what he's implying, but no. This was a term created by Mr.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Depp that she heard for the first time in 2012 after he slapped her three times across the face and said I thought I put the monster away And after he sat up here on the stand under oath and told you that she made that term up We looked back at his texts the writing at the time The first text is after Australia in 2015 during a period of sobriety a short-lived period of recovery for Mr Depp when he told Jerry Judge his bodyguard All I had to do was send the monster away and lock him up Remember he texted Elton John or sent an email to Elton John in 2012 referring to himself as the monster He tells Dr Kipper the doctor to whom he's paid millions and millions and millions of dollars thank you my darling Kipper He says I've locked my monster child away in a cage deep within He tells Stephen Deuters You know Mr Deuters He liked to text Mr Deuters He tells him She thinks my Peruvian period which is a reference to cocaine he admitted to that that means him using cocaine has made me a monster and that I'm ruining the relationship Imagine that someone actually thinking that maybe the impact of alcohol and cocaine is ruining your relationship How dare she He says Need to discuss the news helicopters The monster I want to shoot a motherfucker but don't worry the monster is not involved Mr Depp knows that he can turn into a monster He knows that He knows that He got up here on the stand to try to deny that to you Talk about a lack of accountability Let's see the monster Let's see the monster in the flesh

MR. ROTTENBORN: Do you see Ms. Heard laughing in that? She's not laughing at that. Mr. Depp, in this courtroom, right now is laughing and making snide remarks as that video is being played. Who does that? Who does that? Imagine being in Amber's shoes on February 10th, 2016, videotaping him: Because February 10th, 2016, videotaping him: Because when he's sober and sweet, you've never loved anything more, but when he mixes the drugs and he mixes drinks, he turns into this man. You've seen it before. You're praying it won't happen again, but deep down you know it will. You know that that man will come out. You know that monster will come out, and you want him to change. Imagine watching your husband, the person you love, behaving violently that way, like a wild animal. That is abuse. That's abuse. You don't have to look at that incident in isolation to find that it's abuse.

MR. ROTTENBORN: You can look at it in the context of their whole relationship. This isn't about breaking down a series of individual days that you've heard evidence about. This is about the cumulative effect of Mr. Depp and Ms. Heard's relationship and whether that constitutes abuse. That is abuse, ladies and gentlemen, That's domestic abuse. And their response is, she sold it to TMZ, which she didn't. There's no evidence of. And she was on a plane, the only evidence suggests she was on an international flight when Mr. Tremaine testified that they received it and it was validated within something like 15 minutes, which could only have happened by the person who sent it. Ms. Heard was in the air. She didn't send it to TMZ. She never leaked anything to TMZ, as you heard from her own mouth, Who would want that to become public? Again, in order to find for Mr.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Depp, you would have to find that for his defamation claim, every single thing that ever happened between them that could constitute abuse, Amber was the abuser, every single time. You would have to believe the unbelievable. You all are smarter than that. But Mr. Depp thought he could hide it. He thought he could hide the monster. That's why he lied in insurance forms that you have to fill out in order to be able to act. That's why he said he hadn't taken illegal substances, whether prescribed by a physician or not. That obviously wasn't true, within the past 12 months. They keep talking about Mr. Depp's role as a father. This is what he sent, a text that he sent, DX207, "Now Lily-Rose," his daughter, "hates me because she thinks I'm drinking, and she's right but I can't admit it or I fucking die in her eyes. Thanks for that one, Vanessa." This is Mr. Depp passed out in a Tokyo hotel room during the press tour for the Lone Ranger in 2013, when Ms. Heard testified that Mr. Depp screamed at me, and all I could think were the kids were in an adjoining room, and Mr. Depp passed out with his head like this.

MR. ROTTENBORN: I don't think he was sleeping on the floor because he had a bad back. They keep referring to these pictures as she took pictures of Mr. Depp while he was asleep. He's not asleep in that picture, he's passed out, drunk and high, and she's taking pictures because she wants him to realize what he's done and get help and seek help. I don't think that looks like the spice cabinet of anyone in this courtroom. That's Mr. Depp. This is Mr. Depp.

MR. ROTTENBORN: This is Mr. Depp. This is Mr. Depp. And all you hear from Mr. Depp, when these pictures are shown, is snickering and defiance. Victim blaming. Blaming Ms. Heard for taking this picture of him. For trying to help. So let's talk about some of these instances of abuse -- oh, forgot one. In March 2013, talked about the wino forever tattoo, in March 2013, there were a couple instances. There was one on March 8th, and we'll get to that in a second, where he was drinking brown liquor and doing a lot of cocaine. Or that '15 might march -- sorry, that was March 22nd. On March 8th, this is when Mr.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Depp backhanded her and she felt that her lip went into her teeth and got a little blood on the wall. He grabbed her by the arm and held her on the floor, screaming at her.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And then, on the way to filming the Keith Richards documentary, after a multi-hour argument, he grabbed their dog, their teacup Yorkie and holds the dog, Boo, out of the window of a moving car and he's howling like an animal, Ms. Heard said, while holding the dog out of the car. That is abuse, ladies and gentlemen. That's abuse. Let's go back to this. Because Ms. Vasquez read a parade of witnesses that she believes support Johnny's defense in this case. But as you've seen, over the course of this proceeding, these witnesses, as I previewed in the opening, almost all of them are witnesses on his payroll. They're all scared to say anything bad about him. And they've seen what happens to people who do. And none were there for the instances of domestic violence. What they're saying is, oh, if he didn't abuse Ms. Heard in front of his four bodyguards, then it must have never happened. That's essentially what they're asking you to believe. That's ridiculous. That's not the way domestic violence works. Take his sister Christi.

MR. ROTTENBORN: We'll come back to this in a minute. We'll come back to this in a minute. This, is March 22nd, this is what Mr. Depp said, isn't every hour happy hour? Again, totally abandoning any responsibility for behavior like this. But what happened on March 22nd is he wanted Ms. Heard to remove a painting by her ex-partner, he wanted her to admit to an affair that she wasn't having. She didn't admit to it because it wasn't true, so he decided to have some lines of cocaine and some whiskey for breakfast.

MR. ROTTENBORN: I know it seems like a year ago, but she was the first witness in this case. You remember her on the stand, when I presented her these texts that say stop drinking, stop coke and stop pills. You remember her squirming and saying, oh, I don't think I was asking him to stop drinking, stop coke, and stop pills. She couldn't answer that basic question because she wanted to lie for Mr. Depp and say that Ms. Heard was delusional. She couldn't even admit this to you. She's nothing but an enabler. The same with Sean Bett, his head of security, who has been sitting in this courtroom for the past six weeks. He's right there. Mr. Bett was the one who testified to you that when Mr. Depp has a few drinks of alcohol, he said -- I wrote this down, he said it's like the rest of us drinking sparkling water. I don't think that kitchen video that we just saw was like you or I when we drink sparkling water. This is the same Sean Bett who said that on the evening of May 21st, 2016, which Elaine will talk about in a little bit, he said Mr. Depp may have bumped something off a table.

MR. ROTTENBORN: You've seen the pictures. You'll see them again. Just like Travis McGivern said that Mr. Depp rearranged Ms. Heard's closet: You've seen the pictures. You'll see them again. Just like Tara Roberts, in the Bahamas, who tried to blame everything on Ms. Heard, and only under cross-examination admitted that She took a video of their cabin in the Bahamas to try to suggest to you that this assault that Ms. Heard alleges couldn't have taken place, but conveniently, she didn't take the camera into the closet where Mr. Depp held Ms. Heard, hit her. We'll get to that incident. She didn't take the video camera into the bathroom, where he sexually assaulted Ms. Heard. She didn't do that because she wanted to generate evidence only favorable to Mr. Depp. Think about Sean Bett and Starling Jenkins' conflicting stories about the birthday party on April 21st. Remember, Mr.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Depp experienced horrific financial news on the evening of April 21st, 2016. He learned that he was, essentially, out of money and needed to start selling things. We all know what Mr. Depp does when he receives bad news like that. He left the meeting at 9:30 and didn't arrive at Ms. Heard's birthday party until 11:15. Okay, fine, he was late. But we all know what he does when he has that hour and 45 minutes of free time and he's stressed out about something. Mr. Bett testified, remember, he said, I took him to his home on Sweetzer Avenue, his other home, to pick up a birthday present for Ms. Heard. That's what he said. That's what he said. Mr. Jenkins, you may remember him, he testified by video link on the stand, and I said, you don't know what he did in that intervening time period. He said, oh, yes, I do. I do. He said Mr. Depp was visiting his sick mother. And I said, who told you that? And he said Mr. Bett. The witnesses that Mr.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Depp has paraded up here, who are here in person, they're here in person because they're on his payroll, almost all of them. And they're telling you whatever they think they need to tell you to get you to take Mr. Depp's side. Just as we previewed they would do in our opening. But Mr. Depp would go through periods where he would apologize, where he would be grateful. I have no doubt that there were times when Mr. Depp wanted to get better. These are texts, PX120A and 120B, I won't read them all to you, these are texts that Mr. Depp sent Paige Heard, Amber's mom, after detox on the island in 2014. He says there were more than a few times when I thought it would be more simple to take that route, meaning going for a swim and swallow a big drink of ocean. He said it was Amber and Amber alone that got me through this. There's no luckier man on this earth to have the strength that Amber gives me and the full support of each of you. So, as you're weighing the evidence and you're weighing Mr.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Mr. ROTTENBORN]: "Depp's credibility, think to yourself, what do I believe, what he has a motive to say on the stand or what he wrote contemporaneously with the events? Take his own words to Amber after the detox. "Just to let you know that I'm fine, my angel. I miss you, of course, but this was the right thing to do to speed up the process. I love you more than life." CaN A ARON" Mr. ROTTENBORN]: "you more than life.

MR. ROTTENBORN: But then there were these days, and then there were times like this. This is sent on March 9th, we had a slightly grim morning, is the way Mr. Depp describes it. You'll remember the text from a few days later, referred to as the disco bloodbath text. Where Ms. Heard says, "Is that about last Friday night, by any chance?” Mr. Depp responds, "How can you make me smile about such a hideous moment?” He testified, on the stand, I don't remember what happened that Friday night. But Ms. Heard sure did. And this, this is one of the things that she had to show for it. Now, Ms.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Vasquez showed this to you in opening statements and made it seem like, again, remember what I said at the beginning, if you take pictures, they're fake. If you didn't take pictures, it didn't happen. Here's one where she did take a picture, but Ms. Vasquez says, but she doesn't have injuries on her face. Look at the date that this picture was taken, ladies and gentlemen, March 23rd, 2013, days after this incident. So even when there are pictures, they're trying to deceive you into thinking, oh, there should have been more. This is a two-week-old bruise, and she texted it -- look who she texts that to, she texts it to her mom. They say she never told anyone. Text to mom, March 23rd, 2013. Let's go to Hicksville. You remember Hicksville. Obviously, there's been a little bit of discussion about that in this case. This is where Mr. Depp got jealous that a woman named Kelly Sue was sitting close to Ms.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Heard and maybe had her arm around her at a campfire. And everyone was having-a good time. There were some mushrooms involved, there was some drinking, and Mr. Depp got jealous of that. Now, he claims that 17.Ms. Heard is the abuser, that she's so much stronger than he is, but then he testified that the evidence shows that in Hicksville, he was the one who said he was just trying to protect Amber. Well, who says -- why would she need protection if she's the abuser? And he went and he took Kelly on NO PWD she's the abuser? And he went and he took Kelly Sue's hand, forcibly removed it from Ms. Heard, embarrassing Ms. Heard, ruining the mood of the whole night, so they went and they got into an argument in the.trailer, in which not only did he trash the trailer, but he took her into the bathroom, he slammed her into the side wall of the bedroom by her neck, holds her there -- sorry, that was the next one.

MR. ROTTENBORN: In Hicksville, he took her into the bathroom of the trailer and did what he called a cavity search, where he inserted his fingers inside of her and sexually assaulted her, and then trashed the trailer. And you heard this Morgan Night person who testified a few days ago, who said it was $62 of damage. You also heard evidence the way he got involved in this trial was by reaching out to a -- one of the main Johnny Depp fan influencers on social media, and you saw that text. That's how he injected himself into this trial. There was way more than $62 of damage.

MR. ROTTENBORN: You heard testimony from Rocky Pennington, Whitney Heard, Whitney Henriquez, and Amber about him trashing the trailer. And is that really a surprise? The man's admitted that he smashes things when he gets angry. The man's admitted that he's smashed hotel rooms. You saw the quote that he admitted to the other day, that when he wants to hit something, he's going to hit, and he doesn't care about the repercussions. So, in Hicksville, Hicksville was late May 2013, this is a text, another text to drug buddy Bettany, where he says "I, of course, pounded and displayed ugly colors to Amber on a recent journey. I'm an insane person and not so fair-headed after too much of the drink."

MR. ROTTENBORN: Weed, pills, fine. Booze, my capacity is too large, and I won't stop. Ugly and sad. Oh, how I love it."

MR. ROTTENBORN: Okay, Your Honor. Should. I keep going?

MR. ROTTENBORN: Thank you.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Thank you. So that's after Hicksville. This is what I'm getting to next. This, remember the testimony about Mr. Depp being drunk on his yacht, on the island in the Bahamas, in 2013, when Mr. Depp looked a little scary by the way his body fell into the water, and Lily-Rose, his- daughter, started to cry. Ms. Heard comforted Lily-Rose and then Depp accused Amber of making them aware of this, that he was drinking again, making his kids aware of this.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And he slammed her up against the side wall of the bedroom, held her up by her neck, held her there for a second, and said, I can fucking kill you and you're an embarrassment. That's what he said. And then do you remember what happened? Lily-Rose and Amber helicoptered away from the island. And while Amber was in the helicopter with Lily-Rose, Mr. Depp sends her this piece of poetry. Calling her a lesbian camp counselor because she cared about his drinking, and just ridiculing her for trying to protect his daughter. Sickening. This text, let's fast-forward a little bit to -- actually, before we talk about this, this is the Boston flight. Let's talk about the Moscow flight. The Moscow flight, when Mr. Depp and Amber, she said that was the one time she took ecstasy or MDMA with Mr. Depp and she learned her lesson. When he hit her on the plane, when he threatened to break the flight attendant's wrist. Ms. Vasquez, again, just tried to tell you, oh, he always wore rings. Now, Ms. Heard said almost all the time he did. Maybe sometimes when he didn't.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And in the picture that she just showed you, IPX 1248, you can take a look at that when you review the evidence, that's a picture taken in Moscow with no rings, other than a wedding ring, on his finger, or some kind of ring. He's wearing one ring on his finger. And so, in Mr. Depp's world, they're going to try to come at you either way and say well, he was wearing rings, but it didn't leave a mark on your face, and then they show you a picture where he wasn't wearing rings during that trip. So that's what happened in Moscow. On September 2013, in London, Mr. Depp was filming with Paul Bettany, he missed a few days of work, going to a multi-day drug binge, and that's when he told Ms. Heard that if she accepted an invitation and went to a concert with a friend, that she was starring in the movie with, that the engagement would be off. Talk about coercive control that Dawn Hughes testified is abuse. That is abuse, And there's been a lot mentioned in this case by Mr. Depp about Ms. Heard not wanting him to leave. Ms. Heard not wanting him to leave.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Well, this is why she didn't want him to leave, because he goes off with his friends and he twists off, as he calls it and goes off on a multi-day bender. That's why she didn't want him to leave when he got spun up like that and she could see the monster coming. So let's fast-forward to the Boston plane incident. Mr. Depp was jealous that she was filming a movie with James Franco. Ms. Heard testified that when she met him in Boston, she was on the plane, his car pulled up. She could guess, by the way he was moving, she knew what was going to board that plane, and it wasn't Mr. Depp, the man. It was Mr. Depp, the monster. She said, I already know he's drunk, I already know he's using. And then when he got on the plane, he straight-up started taunting her. He called her a gold digger and a slut. He started throwing things at her, ice cubes and utensils, and he slapped her face against the window when she was seated. And when she got up to move, how dare she, he kicked her in the back.

MR. ROTTENBORN: She said, I feel this boot in my back. And he continued to drink and eventually started howling like an animal, passed out in the bathroom. Let's play 221, please.

MR. ROTTENBORN: That's Mr. Depp on the plane. But he expects you to believe him, that he didn't have anything to drink on that plane except for, maybe, one thing of champagne. That's what he expects you to believe. He's talking about blackouts. These blackouts where he doesn't remember what happened. He blames them only on opiates, but we know they happened throughout, where he doesn't remember what's happening. As you're weighing the evidence, as you're assessing whether Mr.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Depp has borne his burden of proof, think to yourself, do you believe Amber's account of what happened on the plane or do you believe that person's account, that you just heard? But, actually, you can look at this account from a few days later. May 30th, in which he told, again, Paul Bettany, he said, "Drank all night before I picked Amber up to fly to LA. No food for days, powders, half a bottle of whiskey, a thousand Red Bulls and vodkas, pills, two bottles of champagne, and what do you get?

MR. ROTTENBORN: An angry aggro engine and a fucking blackout, screaming obscenities and insulting any fuck who got near. I'm done. I'm admittedly too fucked in the head to spray my rage at the one I love. For little reason as well. I'm too old to be that guy, but pills are fine." And he expects you to believe that he has carried his burden of proof in showing that no abuse happened on that plane. You don't have to look at just that, you can look at this text of Patty Smith, when he says "When I was in NYC, there were brief visits and I fucked and charged by horrific fights with Amber. I fucked up and drank and got shitty. Was so disappointed in myself." You can look at his text to Ms.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Heard, the next day, where he says "Once again, I find myself in a place of shame and regret. Of course I'm sorry. I really don't know why or what happened." Well, no wonder. You heard the voice on the plane, of course he doesn't know what happened. "But I will never do it again. My illness somehow crept up and grabbed me. I must get better. I love you and feel so bad for letting you down." And what his response has been, throughout this trial, to things like that is blaming Amber, saying he is just placating her. Is that showing burden of proof and showing that abuse hasn't happened even a single time? This is in the lead-up to Australia, but before we get there, we can talk about January 25th, in Tokyo, at the premiere of Mortdecai, where he did slam her up against the hallway wall, whale on her, and he did hit her on the back in the closet. And what do they say? Look at her backless dress. She doesn't have any bruises.

MR. ROTTENBORN: She testified, herself, that she was checking out pictures because she was concerned that there were. So, now, their theory is, if there's no marks, it didn't happen. We all know that's not the case. February 2015, this is when they got married. The day they got married, you heard the testimony from iO Tillett Wright, where Mr. Depp told him, I can now punch her anytime I want and no one can do anything about it. He'll say it's a joke, a joke he made on his wedding day. Then we fast-forward to Australia, where Ms. Heard is flying from London, where she is filming the Danish Girl, to see her new husband for the first time since their wedding, and these are excerpts from DX 353. All but the bottom right one are in the days leading up to this, where he's on a drug-fueled bender. He's hanging out with Marilyn Manson, he's getting drugs from his assistants, who are enablers, again. There's a reason you didn't hear them testify in this trial.

MR. ROTTENBORN: They're giving him drugs for days and days. And then the one on the bottom right, you'll remember, you've seen a couple times. This is after he chopped his finger off, when he says need more cocaine and ecstasy. So -- and no one, Ms. Heard was in touch with his assistants, but no one told her the hornet's nest that she was walking into. And we all know what happened in Australia. We all know that Mr. Depp, she gets there, he pulls out a bag of MDMA, and he took a handful. She didn't say he took ten at a time. She did say he took eight to ten over the course of that period. The second day, Mr. Depp, who claims that Ms. Heard refused to do a postnup, calls Amber's domestic relations attorney, Michele Mulrooney, you heard from her, when he was drunk and fired her. And he told Amber, for about the 25th time, she said, the only way out of this is death. I don't want a postnup. And then she said that she remembered him slamming her against the wall.

MR. ROTTENBORN: I won't go through, you remember her testimony from Australia, You remember her saying that he had her by the neck, squeezing her neck. You remember her saying that he threw her on the games table, like a ping-pong table. You remember seeing pictures of that broken table. You remember her saying that, at some point, he had a broken bottle up against her face and he told her that he'd carve off her face, that he was throwing bottles at her. He's throwing bottles, one after another, and I could feel glass breaking behind me. And you've seen the evidence of that. He was just, over and over again, smashing the phone into the wall, screaming at me, as she watched it break into pieces. Now, she doesn't know how he lost his finger. She said that she saw him smash a phone to pieces, and you heard him get impeached the other day with his testimony from the U.K., which is different from what he testified here, where he said that he did smash the phone, and then they tried to put that picture in front of you with the desk phone and suggest that that was it. It's deception. Trying to deceive you.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Then you heard Ms. Heard testify that the next morning, she found meat that he left all over the house, but not before what happened before she went to bed that night. When Ms. Heard testified "And I remember trying to get up and I was slipping on the glass." Wanting to move -- "I felt this pressure, pressure in my pubic bone. I remember just not wanting to move because I didn't know if it was broken. I didn't know if the bottle that he had inside me was broken" — bottle that he had inside me was broken." This is the next morning. This is what he wrote with the bloody stump of his finger. There's been testimony about what happened to cut the finger off. But frankly, it's irrelevant to your deliberations here. Amber could have chopped it off with an axe, and it has nothing to do with whether or not Mr. Depp abused her, but we all know she didn't.

MR. ROTTENBORN: We all know that his fingers weren't curled and someone was standing with a half gallon vodka bottle, from about where that canopy is, and threw it and it somehow managed to damage just the bottom of the finger and leave the nail fully intact, We all know that didn't happen. Mr. Depp knows that didn't happen. We'll see some evidence on that. But here, he writes about her ambitions "Starring Billy Bob and easy Amber." We've talked about controlling jealousy. We talked about him not wanting her to act. Dawn Hughes testified how that's a form of intimate partner abuse.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Here, he's writing on the mirror again, and they tried to blame her and say that she wrote "call Carly Simon." She didn't write that. Who was the lunatic in the house? Who was writing everywhere? There's no evidence she wrote that. She testified she doesn't know who Carly Simon was until she was told. This is some of the evidence. Mr. Depp told you a couple different stories the other day about the evidence on the right. He claimed that that was the handle of vodka, between those two beer cans there. But then under

MR. ROTTENBORN: Destroys your paintings. Ladies and gentlemen, that's abuse. Good luck and be careful at the top. And this is a good chance to talk about Mr. Depp's controlling and jealous rage and his desire to control Amber's career. He didn't want her to act. As early as 2013, he tells his sister, ] don't need actress bullshit and her fucking ambition. He tells her in this recording.

MR. ROTTENBORN: "I become jealous when you're doing movies. I become irrational and fucking crazy and weird," out of his own mouth. This is some of the notes of Dr. Blaustein, his therapist, "Called himself destructive," something about "wait up to fight the devil, jealous," and I know this is hard to read, but you can see "jealous," you can see "paranoia, fear, envy." He wanted to control her. He wanted to own her. He didn't want her to have any career. And then he says things like, "I have other uses for your throat which do not include injury." No one who's -- hasn't previously grabbed someone by the throat would write "which do not include injury," but we all know how Mr. Depp thinks along these lines.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Because you saw these two texts the other day that he sat on the stand and denied writing, and I'm not going to read them again. Because they're the most vulgar, vile writing you can imagine. He said, "That's not my style. I wouldn't write like that." Of course he would, and he did. These are texts that he produced, that he gave to Amber and our team in this litigation, from him to his personal assistant Stephen Deuters. This is the way he thinks about women, this, not what you heard on the stand, that. It's disgusting. He admitted that he cut his finger off. This is evidence of him admitting to it to people other than Amber. "I cut the top of my middle finger off," says that to Dr. Kipper. Says it again to Dr. Kipper. The bottom one, he says to Nurse Falati: "I just chopped my finger off." But he does say it to Amber too, remember? We played this one four times, and Mr. Depp denied that he was actually saying "the day that I chopped my finger off." Let's hear it one more time.

MR. ROTTENBORN: "The day that I chopped my finger off." So let's fast-forward to March 23rd, 2015. After just a few weeks in Australia, Mr. Depp has a finger injury, no doubt about that. He comes home. He gets what they call a soft cast on it, which you heard his treating physician and our expert say doesn't have sides on it. But it's a hard plaster cast over the top of his finger that can be wielded like a club. And they got in an argument when Ms. Heard discovered that he was having an affair with a woman named Rochelle that had been going on before the wedding, after the wedding, and she confronts him about that. No surprise there.

MR. ROTTENBORN: They got in a huge argument. At some point in the argument, he bolted up the stairs. Now, Travis McGivern claims that she threw a Red Bull can at him, She and Whitney Henriquez say that absolutely didn't happen. But even if you believe Mr. McGivern, at some point, Mr. Depp went up the stairs; he went to the fight. This is the man that claims he always want to run, and this time he had his bodyguard with him. So he could have just walked out the door, but he runs up the stairs. And Ms. Henriquez is standing on the precipice of the stairs. And Amber admitted that when she thought he was about to push her down the stairs, as he's grabbing at her and Amber with his free hand and trying to club them with the casted hand, that he said, "I punched him square in the face." "I punched him square in the face." And they showed you a picture of the shiner that she had -- that Mr. Depp had. Ms. Heard doesn't deny that.

MR. ROTTENBORN: They're trying to say she's the abuser for defending herself and her sister from this animal who's running at them, this person that they claim couldn't possibly have done this because he had a hurt finger. Yet he could have done this. This is what Mr. McGivern said was rearranging her closet. I don't know what you-all do when you rearrange your closets, but I hope it doesn't look like this. This is throwing a clothing rack down this stairs. This is knocking this over. This is what he did to rearrange her closet with his hurt finger that he couldn't possibly have hit Ms. Heard with, they claim. That, in and of itself, that destruction of property, even if he hadn't hit her that night, that's abuse. Imagine being married to someone and walking on eggshells so thick that you don't know if you set them off, if that's what's going to happen. That's abuse, and it's disgusting. But sometimes he would apologize. He'd say, "I can't express how sorry I am for having stooped so low and to have spewed such vicious untruths for the sole purpose of hurting you.

MR. ROTTENBORN: "Grievous error, shameful." So he went in these cycles. He went in these cycles. She thought he could change for good, and when it was good, it was really good. But then sometimes, things like December 15th came around where she remembers him chasing her in the kitchen. She remembers him shoving her two or three times and sending her toppling over a chaise lounge and saying, "Do you really want to go again, tough guy?" And she looked at him, and he balled up his fist, leaned back, and headbutted her square in the nose and pounded her head with the back of his fist so she couldn't breathe on that bed that we're going to see in a second, where she was suffocating in this pillow top. And she said, "This is when I thought I was going to die. He's going to kill me, and he doesn't even know what he's doing because he's out of his mind." And these are the pictures that they claim -- I don't know what they're claiming. I don't know if they're claiming she painted on the bruise.

MR. ROTTENBORN: "Oh, you weren't hurt badly enough; so therefore, you're making it up"? Look under her eye. And, again, their theory is that all of this is a lie, all of this was some grand hoax. If this were a hoax, ladies and gentlemen, she'd have worse injuries than that, She'd really do it up. She took pictures as they existed, when she could at the time of abuse, and yet Ms. Vasquez has the nerve to say, "Well, why didn't you PLANE’ Con NA Ph WN = to ‘May 27, 2022 videotape an incident of abuse?" What? As she's being hit, she's supposed to somehow grab a video camera with one hand while she's defending herself with another hand? You heard her in one of the audio tapes, talking about when she hit him as he was trying to barge at her and she got her feet caught under a door as he’s coming after her. And, of course, as Dawn Hughes testified to, victims, of course, of control like this, they do-try to appease their abusive partner and apologize for things that aren't their fault.

MR. ROTTENBORN: "So as you're coming at me, Johnny; and you push a door into me and I have to hit you to get away to protect myself." Yeah, she did apologize for that because that's the cycle of violence. That's what victims do, yet they continue to blame the victim There's no evidence she painted on that bloody lip. And again, if we're talking about a hoax. The next day, she went on James Corden, they say, "Well, you can't see any injury there, so it must not have happened." She would have to so it must not have happened." She would have to be the dumbest person in the world to say, "I'm going to commit an abuse hoax. Let's do it the day before I go on national television. Let's do it the day before." But you heard Melanie Inglessis, her makeup artist, testify in great deal -- and I didn't understand half the terms about makeup that she was using -- but she testified in great detail about exactly what she did to cover up those bruises, the red lipstick that she put to cover up the busted lip. You heard the testimony of that from a neutral party who said exactly what she did.

MR. ROTTENBORN: She talked about how she looked at the color wheel to neutralize the bruising. They claim it was just an accidental headbutt. Well, no accidental headbutt rips out hair. They claim, "Oh, Ms. Heard somehow used a pocketknife to cut this portion of the bed out to stage this." Well, I don't know if that's a pocketknife or not, but the only testimony in this trial about a pocket knife is Whitney Henriquez saying Mr. Depp carried a pocketknife in his pocket every day. We all know where that -- if it is a pocketknife, where that came from. I think the most telling -- one of the most telling things about this incident is the text he sent to David Heard, Amber's dad, two weeks later, where he says, "I meant to send this to you a week or so ago. I'm sending it to you now," and he says -- I forget if it's a text or an email, but you can look at DX580 -- he says, "Yes.

MR. ROTTENBORN: I fucked up and went too far in our fight." 11.Because as a result of that fight and the bruises that all of her family saw, the family refused to go to the Bahamas with him for Christmas. The family refused to go to the Bahamas for Christmas, and on that trip to the island, Mr. Depp kept passing out. And every time he passed out, he would dump a glass of wine on Amber's lap, and she didn't like that and she yelled at him.

MR. ROTTENBORN: (7874 to 7877) 27, 2022 talk about a honeymoon -- he held her up against the wall while she was trying to get his arms off her neck. And he was squeezing her neck against the railway car. "And at some point, I pull the lapel of his shirt." He rips the shirt off, and she woke up with the shirt around her neck and a giant knot on the back of her head. Let's fast-forward to her birthday party, just very quickly. He experienced terrible financial news that night. He came over. They got into a fight. There's been conflicting testimony about that.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And we're going to skip through a little bit of this now and Elaine will talk about this in the context of the counterclaim, but these are pictures afterwards. These are pictures that now they're claiming that -- "Oh, they must have been faked." There's been no testimony in this case that these pictures were faked. There's been no testimony that the marks you see on Amber's face, including this mark with a straight line from below her eye to the top of her temple that lines up directly with a phone, there's been no testimony that those are faked. Mr. Depp went through the house. He destroyed pictures of her friends. That's abuse. Property destruction like that, in and of itself, it's abuse. He destroyed her office. He destroyed her friend Rocky Pennington's preparation for the bead show that she was having. He spilled wine in the hallway that you'll notice the police denied. "Oh, there was no spilled wine in the hallway." Well, even Isaac Baruch testified that he saw this in the hallway.

MR. ROTTENBORN: And they said she never said anything to her medical providers. These are the texts that she sent to her nurse, Erin Falati, the night that it happened. These are pictures of her in the courtroom. We're not going to play this right now, but you can listen to this. This is that terribly disturbing text of him in July 2016 threatening to cut himself and telling her, You cut me or I will You all remember that.

MR. ROTTENBORN: He says, "I want her replaced on that WB film." Ladies and gentlemen, the facts are absolutely overwhelming of abuse. One time, that's all you have to remember. Mr. Depp simply cannot prove to you that he never once abused Amber, and if you don't know, you have to return a verdict for Ms. Heard.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Ruling against Amber here sends a message that no matter what you do as an abuse victim, you always have to do more. No matter what you document, you always have to document more. No matter whom you tell, you always have to tell more people. No matter how honest you are about your own imperfections and your own shortcomings in a relationship, you have to be perfect in order for people to believe you. Don't send that message. That's what he wants you to send. So I'm going to quickly get to another point that you have to find in order to prove or to rule for Mr. Depp. You would have to find that Ms. Heard made the statements with actual malice.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Now, what Mr. Chew didn't tell you is that you have to find this by clear and convincing evidence. So this is much higher than the greater weight of the evidence standard that applies to the other claims, the other elements of the claim. Clear and convincing evidence is evidence that creates in your minds a firm belief or conviction that Mr. Depp has proved this issue. So if you believe that Ms. Heard did not act maliciously in writing her op-ed, then you must return a verdict for Ms. Heard, even if you think that he never abused her. But we can I'll quickly go over the evidence of this. The op-ed, you look at the words; it clearly wasn't a hit piece. She visited her attorney, Eric George, who testified by video that his objective was to make sure that there could be no meritorious claim that could be brought about this article relating to defamation. He gave Ms. Heard advice. She affirmatively followed all of it.

MR. ROTTENBORN: So you cannot find that Ms. Heard met the clear and convincing evidence standard, given the testimony of Eric George, given the testimony of Terrence Dougherty from the ACLU, when Amber went out of her way to ask her lawyer if it was okay. They will say doesn't matter if she's lying, but even if that isn't -- they will say that that doesn't matter, if she's lying, but even that isn't true. Because, again, keep in mind that if Ms. Heard wanted to be malicious toward Mr. Depp, the article would be very different. And I think it's interesting here -- and we'll talk about Mr. Waldman in a second -- but that Amber utilizing her attorney, Eric George, to make sure that she was following the law. Mr. Depp used his attorney, Adam Waldman, as an attack dog to defame Amber and to fulfill Depp's promise to her of global humiliation. The last thing I'll touch on before Elaine talks is Mr. Depp's damages. The man's at least consistent in one respect: He blames other people for his problems, everyone but himself.

MR. ROTTENBORN: You heard us reading the stack of articles dating years before he broke up with Amber, before their marriage broke apart, talking about his problems, talking about the fact that his movies were flops, talking about the fact that he was late to the set, that he's unreliable as actor.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Word of reminder here, ladies and gentlemen, is that the only thing Amber ever did that Mr. Depp is allowed to sue her for is the op-ed. He's trying to say, "I want to sue her for what she said in 2016. I want to sue her for harm that was caused then." You cannot do that. The only thing you're being asked to decide is are the words of the op-ed defamatory, nothing else. Any damage to Mr. Depp's career is self-caused. Then think about the testimony that you've heard from his former business manager, Joel Mandel. Said that Depp had issues with drugs and alcohol that damaged his career. Depp sued him. His former agent, Tracey Jacobs, said he was late to the set and that he used an earpiece. Depp fired her. She said Disney never committed to Pirates 6.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Disney's corporate representative, Tina Newman, said that there was no record in Disney's records of this op-ed. This op-ed had nothing to do with it. In fact, Kathryn Arnold, our damages expert, testified that the paper version of the article that allegedly, they say, came out four days after the op-ed, was published the same day as the op-ed that said that Johnny might not be in Pirates 6. The same day, the paper article came out the same day. So the op-ed didn't cause that. There's no evidence of any contract by Disney for Pirates 6. His agent, Jack Whigham, couldn't identify a contract. His former agent, Christian Carino, said that there was no contract. He didn't lose anything as a result of this op-ed. Anything he's lost is the result of his own choices. You also heard him lie to you. You heard him tell you that this was his first chance to tell his story, but let's break it down because that's not true. He could have fought the TRO that Amber filed. He could have said, "I didn't abuse her:" He chose not to do that.

MR. ROTTENBORN: He could have fought her in the divorce case, but he chose not to do that. Instead, he signed the statement saying that no one had falsified any statements. He only filed this suit after he met Adam Waldman, the same Adam Waldman who convinced him to file suit against his former business manager, to file suit against his law firm and fire them and blame them for things. But by the time that Amber wrote the op-ed, Mr. Depp already had had another op-ed, Mr. Depp already had had another opportunity to tell his story. He filed a case in the U.K. against The Sun for calling him a wife beater. And in that case, he had many of the same witnesses. He was on the stand for parts of five days, and he got to tell the fact finder in the U.K. whatever he wanted. Now, it's not the same testimony he told here. You heard me impeach him about 13 times with his testimony from the U.K. But he's had his chances.

MR. ROTTENBORN: Ladies and gentlemen, it is time to tell Mr. Depp this was his last chance, tell him to move on with his life, tell him to let Amber move on with hers, stand up for the freedom of speech, stand up for the First Amendment. This trial is about so much more than Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard. It's about the freedom of speech. Stand up for it, protect it, and reject Mr. Depp's claims against Amber. And now you'll hear from Ms. Bredehoft about the counterclaim. Thank you.