Depp Granted Access to Amber Heard Phone Records in Bid to Prove Photo Tampering of 'Bruising' Pics
© AP Photo / Alvaro Barrientos
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Hollywood actor Johnny Depp , who has been seeking to clear his name after losing a defamation case and subsequent appeal in March against The Sun newspaper, which labelled him a "wife-beater" amid domestic abuse allegations lobbed by Amber Heard, has long maintained that his ex-wife had doctored photos of herself with two black eyes.
A Virginia court ruled on 3 November that “Pirates of the Caribbean” star Johnny Depp can access his ex-wife Amber Heard’s phone so that an expert assessment can establish if there is any evidence of photo tampering.
Cast member Johnny Depp and his actress wife Amber Heard arrive for the premiere of the British film "Black Mass" in London, Britain October 11, 2015.
© REUTERS / Suzanne Plunkett/Files
The Hollywood actor has been waging a $50 million libel suit against the “Aquaman” actress and hopes to prove she doctored photos purporting to show her with two black eyes, which she says she suffered in 2015 at the hands of Depp.
“Ms. Heard’s counsel has repeatedly used these phony photographs at deposition,” Depp’s lawyer Benjamin Chew alleged to the Circuit Court of Fairfax County, Va., in a court filing cited by Page Six.
Previously, according to Chew, images given to Depp’s legal team failed to include any metadata, rendering expert Brian Neumeister unable to verify the details. The expert’s preliminary investigation purportedly revealed that some of the photographs had been run through a photo editing application, Photo 3, that can “easily manipulate images such as showing bruises where none actually existed,” Chew was cited as saying.
Depp, 58, is suing Heard, 35, in Virginia over a 2019 op-ed in the Washington Post. In it, while not mentioning Depp by name, the woman lobbed accusations of domestic abuse widely interpreted as being against him. She described having suffered two black eyes, a broken nose and a broken lip during a 2015 attack in Los Angeles. Subsequently, photos of the alleged injuries Heard sustained were broadly published in the media.
Amber Heard has been accused of fabricating her injuries
© Photo : Amber Heard/High Court
According to Depp’s lawyer, when police responded to the alleged beating, “they found no injury upon Ms. Heard and no disruption to the penthouses.
“Ms. Heard and her friends then fabricated photos that she used to obtain an ex parte TRO [temporary restraining order] and a $7 million divorce settlement which Ms. Heard falsely testified in London she gave to the ACLU and, more scandalously, to the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles; sick children with cancer,” reads the court filing.
It is added that the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) “disavowed the photographs” and “said they did not depict what they saw.” The new Virginia court filing claims that the Sun’s expert analysis had also concluded that Heard’s photographs showing alleged injuries to her face from December 2015 “were manipulated three years later.” Images from an iPad Pro 10.5 were ostensibly created on or after October 6, 2018.
“As such, any editing of the trial bundle versions would have been on or after Oct. 6 2018. So Ms. Heard or someone on her behalf doctored those photographs three years later. When that came up in her testimony in London, Ms. Heard falsely denied it. In short, Your Honour, without forensic imaging Mr. Neumeister cannot properly assess or verify Ms. Heard’s data,” stated Depp’s legal team.
Johnny Depp has repeatedly dismissed Heard's domestic violence allegations against him as "fabricated" abuse hoaxes. Furthermore, in May 2019 the actor said that "while mixing prescription amphetamines and non-prescription drugs with alcohol" Heard "hit, punched, and kicked me. She also repeatedly and frequently threw objects into my body and head, including heavy bottles, soda cans, burning candles, television remote controls, and paint thinner cans, which severely injured me".
In November 2020, Depp lost his libel case against the UK’s Sun newspaper over the article that called him a “wife beater” after the judge said the outlet had proved that 12 of the 14 alleged incidents of domestic violence described in the article had occurred.
Actor Johnny Depp leaves the High Court in London, Wednesday July 15, 2020
© AP Photo / Kirsty O'Connor
In March 2021, after a three-week trial in the Royal Courts of Justice, Depp was refused permission to challenge the High Court libel ruling involving the story in The Sun. Depp’s lawyer Adam Waldman said the column in the UK outlet was an “abuse of the #MeToo movement”, while Amber Heard “masquerades as victim rather than abuser.”
Depp’s suit claims that the actor has suffered financial losses because of the accusations, as it resulted in him being dropped from his role as Captain Jack Sparrow in the 14th-highest-grossing film series of all time - the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise.
Depp’s legal woes ultimately played a role in him bowing out as Grindelwald from the Fantastic Beasts franchise. In response to the Wednesday ruling by the Virginia court, Amber Heard’s attorney Elaine Bredehoft was cited by Page Six as acknowledging that the actress, “welcomes the opportunity to present her evidence in a trial by jury, in a court of law” next year. She accused Depp’s team of attempting to try the case via the media.
“This is a dirty strategy (after having been found to have committed multiple significant acts of domestic violence against Amber Heard) by Mr. Depp’s legal team, to present false claims while avoiding accusations of defamation because of judicial immunity. While legal hearings are protected from defamation, they are not protected from leaks to the press, which is exactly Mr. Depp’s intention.”
Amber Heard will appear in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom which is expected to hit theatres on December 16th, 2022. Meanwhile, Johnny Depp recently appeared in reality-based crime drama, City of Lies.
