The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard saga has a plot twist worthy of the mid-season finale of a Netflix series, in the form of an apparently rogue Fairfax County juror.
Deadline reports that Heard’s legal team has requested a new trial in the defamation case filed by Depp over a 2018 Washington Post op-ed in which she wrote about becoming the “public face” of domestic abuse.
The request for a new trial is based on an allegation from the Heard legal team that “Juror No. 15 was not, in fact, the same individual as listed on the jury panel,” according to a filing made Friday with the Fairfax County Circuit Court.
According to the court filing, a jury summons was sent to an address in April for a 77-year-old man with the same last name as a 52-year-old who lives at the residence, but it was the 52-year-old who showed up and was ultimately seated on the jury.
Somehow this got past the attention of court officers, and the 52-year-old was never asked to produce ID, or was able to get away with producing a fake ID, and also possibly filled out a required online information form indicating that they were born in 1945.
“As the Court no doubt agrees, it is deeply troubling for an individual not summoned for jury duty nonetheless to appear for jury duty and serve on a jury, especially in a case such as this,” Heard’s lawyers argue in their filing.
For a legal Hail Mary in the wake of the $15 million jury verdict awarded to Depp on June 1, this ain’t a bad one.
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Chris Graham
