I'm just expressing my impressions of the American legal system right now. I'm not trying to explain anything. I just think that I understand this and I find it interesting. I might be wrong.
So, we all know about the presumption of innocence - at least, we all should.
In criminal cases, the accused has to be unanimously found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt for his or her liberty to be taken away.
In civil cases, it's more of a "more likely than not" burden of proof because the defendant's life and freedom isn't on the line - just his or her money.
Still, in defamation cases like we're seeing with Depp and Heard, it seems that, even though it's a civil trial, the burden of proof that Depp has is just as high, if not higher, than a prosecutor in a criminal case.
American law differs from, say, the UK when it comes to defamation in that the burden of proof is shifted. In the USA the burden of proof is on the plaintiff while, in the UK, the burden of proof is on the defendant. So, Depp's lawsuit against Heard places 100% of the burden on him to disprove what she said about him.
Really, it doesn't matter if Johnny Depp did, in fact, never once raise his hand in anger to Heard. All Heard needs to do is instil the slightest doubt in the jury that maybe, just maybe, Depp got violent at one point and that she was telling the truth, albeit not the whole truth, in the Washington Post piece that she wrote.
So, we're in a weird place in this case.
It seems that Depp has already won in the court of public opinion, which I think was his primary goal. Still, I think we have to take any decision outside of the jury siding unanimously with Depp with a grain of salt. If Depp wins this thing in court, it's an ultimate indictment of Amber Heard because a jury would have found her to be a lying, manipulative manic beyond a reasonable doubt while finding Depp to be innocent of any allegations of violent actions.
If Depp loses, which is always the most likely scenario when it comes to defamation cases in the USA, so far as I can tell, all that will tell us would be that the jury was convicted that Depp probably did something bad at some point and that their was a grain of truth to what Heard said.
