#MeToo and free speech on trial alongside Amber Heard

Live broadcasts of courtroom hearings are the preferred form of TV drama in the United States. Their ratings wouldn’t be great in Ireland where last Friday, a High Court judge directed a jury with the pleasantly Pickwickian phrase: “Much of the evidence is humdrum.”

That same day, for another jury, in another country, the evidence wasn’t humdrum – rather it was the blasted heath of savage marital detritus. For seven weeks, in a courtroom in Fairfax, Virginia, the abusive relationship of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard has been put on show and filmed like a movie.

Depp is suing his ex-wife for an opinion piece in the Washington Post, in which she described herself as a “public figure representing abuse”. Half a sentence in an article that did not name him. He claims he is innocent of abuse and her statement amounts to lying. Freedom of speech or lies – that is the question.

But in a hearing dominated by abuse and addiction, also on trial was the future of the #MeToo movement itself and the increasingly urgent question of vexatious lawsuits. A little more than a week ago, the singer Imelda May found herself the subject of a Twitter pile-on for saying nice things about Depp. “Johnny is the kindest, coolest, most thoughtful, considerate, respectful, truthful, heartful human you could ever know,” she tweeted. Two days later she deleted the tweet, saying: “I surprise myself with my continuous naivete of the viciousness of Twitter.”

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Among other things, May had unwittingly stumbled on a fault line of feminist anxiety beginning to make its presence felt in the courtroom in Virginia. What she obviously didn’t realise was that, in certain quarters, her sincere words meant that she had joined the ranks of right-wing media and men’s rights activists; male critics of Heard like Chris Rock who joked “Believe all women – except Amber Heard”. She was part of a #MeToo backlash – complicit even, in its undoing.

It’s fair to say May is the kind of person who stands up for the underdog. Support bands who toured with her, even when she was less than famous, tell how she looked out for them, making sure they were well paid. The rich irony in the reaction to May’s tweet is that Ireland must be the only small corner of the world that is still anti-Depp. Elsewhere, especially in the US, Heard has been tried by TikTok and tortured by Twitter, while Depp has been adulated for his performance in the witness box, which is a mystery as he delivers his evidence at a pace so painfully slow any movie audience would have reached for the rotten tomatoes.

And the show will all run again as Heard intends to counter-sue. While many might joke that there should be a law against a third rerun of Depp and Heard – actually in many parts of the US, there is. And it’s an important one. Depp took this case strategically in Virginia because although both live in California, Heard could probably have had the whole trial stopped there under California’s laws against SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation).

In plain language, SLAPP means vexatious, nuisance, (usually defamation), cases designed to prevent criticism. In Ireland, the chilling effects of defamation cases are not unknown. Elsewhere, laws against vexatious cases are burgeoning.

At the time that May tweeted, the hearing consisted of a relentless flood of noxiousness. Certain facts are incontrovertible. In Depp’s favour, there is a recording on which Heard admits to hitting him; the tip of his finger was severed by a vodka bottle she threw at him and there is not a single piece of medical evidence to corroborate abuse against her. In Heard’s favour, there are vile texts about her to his friends; a text from his assistant saying he wanted to kill her; a recording of him belittling her for trying to be “authoritative”, and he admits to headbutting her by accident. Mystifyingly, also against Heard is the fact the she promised to donate the entire proceedings of her divorce to a charity and didn’t.

On it went relentlessly, reminiscent of nothing so much as the toxic tango in Shane MacGowan’s Fairytale of New York: “You’re a bum, you’re a punk, you’re an old s**t on junk.” Except some of the detail – faeces left on his side of the bed – was worse. The great achievement of #MeToo was that it established that there is no such thing as a perfect victim. The problem with Heard is that “no perfect victim” might be an understatement. She is a very imperfect victim. Her own counsel in closing argument acknowledged that she abused Depp, saying the case was “not a question of who abused the most”.

In all domestic abuse cases, the compelling undercurrent is that a man’s strength is disproportionate to a woman’s. Heard’s team say that Depp has not proved that he never once raised his hand to her. But they have not proved he did. There is natural collective tendency to rush to Heard’s defence, given the offensive language he indulged in. But offensive language is not physical violence and indeed is a right under freedom of speech. Lying is not. Throughout proceedings there was the strong sense that this pair are not finished with each other yet. Endless trials preventing them from moving on ensure there will be no winner. And that includes freedom of speech as May found.