Judge rejects Amber Heard's request for new trial in Johnny Depp case
A judge has denied actor Amber Heard's request for a new trial in her case against ex-husband Johnny Depp.
On Wednesday, Judge Penney Azcarate, the Fairfax County, Virginia, judge who presided over the six-week trial in June, issued a written order denying Heard's request.
Last week, Heard's attorneys filed a motion saying that one of the jurors chosen for the trial was not the same person who received the jury summons.
The person on the summons, who listed his birth year as 1945, shares the same last name and address as the juror who served and who listed his birth year as 1970. According to the court filing, "The individual who appeared for jury duty with this name was obviously the younger one."
"Defendant does not allege Juror Fifteen's inclusion on the jury prejudiced her in any way," Azcarate wrote in her decision Wednesday. "The juror was vetted, sat for the entire jury, deliberated, and reached a verdict. The only evidence before this Court is that this juror and all jurors followed their oaths, the Court's instructions, and orders. This Court is bound by the competent decision of the jury."
Attorneys for actor Johnny Depp on Monday rejected the efforts by Heard's legal team and called the filing, "frivolous."
"While Ms. Heard slings an exceptional amount of mud at the wall in the hope that something might stick, the jury's verdict on damages was perfectly reasonable and supported by the evidence and testimony" heard over the trial, Depp's attorneys wrote.
Depp sued Heard for defamation in March 2019 after Heard wrote a 2018 op-ed piece in The Washington Post about domestic violence. The article didn't mention Depp by name, but his lawyers said the article defamed him by referring to allegations of abuse as she filed for divorce in 2016.
In early June, a jury found Heard guilty of three defamation claims and ordered her to pay $10.35 million in damages to Depp. Depp was found guilty of one defamation claim and Heard was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages.
The jury concluded "they were both abusive to each other" but Heard's team failed to prove Depp's abuse was physical.
"They had their husband-wife arguments. They were both yelling at each other," one of the seven jurors told "GMA" in an exclusive interview in June. "I don't think that makes either of them right or wrong. That's what you do when you get into an argument, I guess. But to rise to the level of what she was claiming, there wasn't enough or any evidence that really supported what she was saying."
"We didn't take into account anything outside [the courtroom]. We only looked at the evidence," he added. "They were very serious accusations and a lot of money involved. So we weren't taking it lightly."
ABC News' Matthew Stone contributed to this report.
