Mitri Shatara

The high-profile defamation trial case involving actors Johnny Depp, 58, and his ex-wife Amber Heard, 36, began April 12 in Fairfax, Va.

The trial has swept the nation and is centered around a defamation lawsuit Depp filed against Heard in 2019 about an op-ed she wrote about domestic violence in 2018.

Depp says the article about the alleged physical abuse irreparably damaged his career.

The trial has put the Hollywood heavyweights’ tumultuous relationship on full display inside the courtroom in Fairfax, Virginia.

Here’s what you’ve missed so far.

The Relationship Between Amber Heard And Johnny De

Amber Heard and Johnny Depp met on the set of The Rum Diary.

They began dating in 2021 after Depp separated from his partner of 14 years, Vanessa Paradis.

Heard also broke up with her partner, Tasya van Ree.

The actors were married in early 2015 and Heard filed for divorce just 15 months later.

Depp released this public statement after the divorce:

“Given the brevity of this marriage and the most recent and tragic loss of his mother, Johnny will not respond to any of the salacious false stories, gossip, misinformation, and lies about his personal life. Hopefully the dissolution of this short marriage will be resolved quickly.”

Why Is Johnny Depp Suing Amber Heard?

So, why is Depp suing Heard?

Depp brought a $50 million defamation suit against Heard in March of 2019 after an article published by Heard was released in the Washington Post the previous December.

In the article Heard referred to herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse” and how women in sexual assault cases were treated. 

Depp was never mentioned by name.

Depp claimed he was dropped from his role in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise just days after the article was published and insists the article caused irreversible damage to his career.

However, some allege Depp’s career was already on the rocks after the couple’s publicized breakup and the abuse allegations between them.

Why Is Amber Heard Suing Johnny Depp?

Heard’s lawyers tried to get Depp’s defamation lawsuit dismissed after losing a similar case in the U.K. case.

However, the judge refused, citing differences in U.K. and U.S. defamation laws.

The judge also pointed out that Heard was not a defendant in the case against The Sun.

This led Heard to file a $100 million countersuit against Depp.

She claimed Depp defamed her when his legal team referred to her claims as “fake” and a “sexual violence hoax.”

The trial is taking place in Fairfax, Va where Washington Post is published due to Heard’s op-ed being published in the Washington Post, so the trial ., where the newspaper is printed.

What Was In The Washington Post op-ed?

Heard’s Washington Post op-ed headline was, “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.”

She discussed the public backlash she received after she “became a public figure representing domestic abuse” in 2016.

She’d go on to advocate for more support for victims of domestic violence.

Even though Depp was never mentioned by name, the events she described in the article aligned with the couples 2016 divorce. 

What’s Happened In Court So Far?

Now about a month into the trial, both Heard and Depp have testified.

Both parties have gotten emotional at times sharing allegations against one another and recounting their rocky relationship.

They’ve discussed meeting on the set of 2011’s “The Rum Diary,” their initial romance, their marriage, divorce, and all the fights in between. 

Depp maintained he “never struck Ms. Heard in any way, nor have I ever struck any women in my life.”

On the other side, Heard’s team argued the 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post column did nothing to damage Depp’s reputation.

They claimed the abuse accusations had already been public for two years, and Depp’s spiraling career was the result of his drinking and substance abuse.

That’s what made him an unreliable commodity to Hollywood studios.

Christian Carino was a one-time agent for both Depp and Heard.

He testified that Heard’s abuse allegations resulted in Hollywood agents and producers wiping Depp from a “Pirates of the Caribbean” sequel as Captain Jack Sparrow.

He was unable to provide any evidence for the claim.

It is understood within the industry, Carino said.

The general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, Terence Dougherty, told jurors there was a push and pull between Heard, her lawyers, and the ACLU.

The ACLU drafted the 2018 Washington Post op-ed piece under Heard’s name, reflecting her role as an ACLU ambassador on gender violence issues.

The ACLU worried about potential violations of a non-disclosure agreement from Depp and Heard’s 2016 divorce settlement and urged Heard’s lawyers to review the original piece.

Shannon Curry, a forensic psychologist, testified on behalf of Depp.

After a dozen hours of interviews with Heard and a review of her mental health records, she concluded that Heard suffers from both a borderline personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder.

The first witness to take the stand on Heard’s behalf, Psychologist Dawn Hughes, testified that Heard had post-traumatic stress disorder.

She also testified that Heard’s PTSD stems from the violence she suffered at the hands of Depp, including multiple acts of sexual assault.

What Was The Sun Lawsuit About?

Some of the allegations were also presented during a 16-day trial in the U.K. in the summer of 2020.

Depp sued the British tabloid, The Sun’s publisher, for libel over a headline calling him a “wife-beater.”

Heard testified in the trial and made 14 allegations of abuse against Depp.

Depp denied all accounts of physical violence, 12 allegations had been “proved to the civil standard and that The Sun’s headline was “substantially true” according to the judge. 

Who Won The Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard Trial? 

No one has “won” yet, and the trial is still ongoing.

The trial could last up to six weeks altogether.

Contact Alexander Shunnarah Trial Attorneys today if you have any questions about your legal rights.

By now, we all know about the Roe v. Wade controversy.

When it all started. On January 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade was a landmark legal decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute banning abortion.

With that decision, the Court effectively legalized abortion procedures across the entire United States.

The court held that a woman’s right to have an abortion was implicit in the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

Before the Roe v. Wade ruling, abortion had been illegal throughout much of the country since the late 19th century.

What has changed. In the years since the 1973 ruling, many states have imposed strict restrictions on abortion rights.

In the article below, we will brush up on the history of abortion in the United States and the 1973 ruling.

Table Of Contents

The History Of Abortion

To talk about the history of abortion, we have to go all the way back to the earliest years of this country.

Indigenous Americans performed all types of health care procedures, including abortions.

The Pilgrims even performed abortions.

Cultural beginnings. Abortion didn’t really become a controversial issue ripe for legislative debate until around the time of the Civil War.

It was also at a time when males were getting involved in reproduction.

Before then, almost 100% of women’s reproductive health care was performed by women and midwives.

The midwives that helped deliver babies could also help women terminate their pregnancies.

If a woman needed an abortion, all she had to do was open her newspaper and look through the ads.

The ban. But between the end of the Civil War in 1910, abortion was banned in all the states.

Abortion was only legal in some states if the mother’s life or the viability of the fetus was at risk.

But that didn’t stop pregnant woman from having an abortion because abortion was still practiced in secret.

But unless you had money to leave the country or pay a doctor willing to perform the procedure for an additional fee, these abortions were much more dangerous than legal abortions.

The change. Attitudes toward abortion began to change in the 1960s, with many people believing women should have the right to choose.

In 1970, Hawaii, New York, Alaska, and Washington were the first states to legalize abortion access for women.

Enter Jane Roe

In 1969, a Texas woman in her early 20s wanted to terminate her pregnancy.

Who is Roe? Norma McCorvey grew up in difficult, impoverished circumstances.

She had previously given birth twice, giving both babies up for adoption.

Abortion was legal in Texas in 1969, but only if it was meant to save the woman’s life.

Some American women could get an abortion by traveling to other countries or paying a hefty fee to a U.S. doctor willing to perform an abortion secretly.

However, those options were out of reach to American women like McCorvey without the financial means.

So some women without the financial means for a safe abortion resorted to illegal, dangerous, “back-alley” abortions or self-induced abortions.

Many of these abortions led to maternal deaths.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, in the 1950s and 1960s, the number of illegal abortions in the United States ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year.

McCorvey failed to get an illegal abortion and was referred to Texas attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington, who wanted to challenge anti-abortion laws.

To protect her safety, her name was changed to Jane Roe in court documents.

The Supreme Court Abortion Decision

In 1970, Coffee and Weddington filed a lawsuit on behalf of McCorvey and all women “who were or might become pregnant and want to consider all options.”

They filed the suit against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County, where McCorvey resided.

In June of the same year, a Texas district court ruled that the state’s abortion ban was illegal.

Their reasoning was it violated a constitutional right to privacy.

Even still, Wade declared he’d continue to prosecute doctors who performed abortions.

To the Supreme Court. The case eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

While the case was going on, McCovey gave birth to the child and put it up for adoption.

On Jan 22, 1973, in a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court struck down the Texas law banning abortion, effectively legalizing the procedure nationwide.

Enter the 14th. The majority opinion written by Justice Harry Blackmun declared that a woman’s right to an abortion was implicit in the right to privacy protected by the 14th Amendment.

The court divided pregnancy into three trimesters.

Broken up into 3. The choice to end a pregnancy in the first trimester was solely up to the woman.

In the second trimester, the government was allowed to regulate abortion, although not ban it.

When a pregnancy reached the third trimester, the state could prohibit abortion to protect a fetus that could survive on its own outside the womb unless a woman’s health was in danger.

Post-Roe America

After the Roe v. Wade decision, politicians started to chip away at the right to abortion.

Barriers were quickly created to actually access abortion.

Enter undue burden. In a 1992 court case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the core holdings of Roe.

However, the court adopted a new “undue burden” standard that allowed states to impose even more restrictions.

Since 1973, states have enacted more than 1,336 abortion restrictions.

The year with the most restrictions put in place was 2021.

New Texas Law. In Texas, a new abortion law, Texas, S.B. 8, has rendered Roe nearly meaningless for most patients in that state.

Roe remains the law of the land, but S.B. 8 bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

That’s before many women even realize they’re pregnant.

Laws like that make abortion access a right in name only.

So, What Happens Next?

On December 1, about 49 years after the Roe v. Wade ruling, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that directly challenges the constitutional right to access abortion. 

The law to be discussed is a Mississippi ban on abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Core element. Mississippi asked the Supreme Court to scrap a core holding of Roe: that a state may not ban abortion before viability.

Mississippi also wants the Supreme Court to overrule Roe and Casey entirely. 

The next piece. The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision in the first half of 2022.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, each state will have the power to decide whether to keep abortion legal or ban it outright.

This is how it was in the years before 1973.

Contact Alexander Shunnarah Trial Attorneys today if you have questions about your legal rights.