This was 2022: Key facts of the Johnny Depp - Amber Heard trial

After a long trial, the jury only needed 13 hours of deliberation to reach its conclusions. Johnny Depp told some lies about his marriage with Amber Heard, the jury decided, but she told more.

First of all, in the three charges of defamation - Amber Heard making false statements about abuse by Depp and thus damaging his reputation - the jury decided in favor of Depp. It ruled that she must pay him $15 million in damages.

$10 million of the money Heard has to pay, are compensatory damages for income Depp reportedly lost, and $5 million are punitive damages. It's a victory for Depp, even though he had demanded $50 million.

As the Washington Post explains, it is not possible to impose more than $350,000 in punitive damages to the accused. This means that, even though the jury awarded 5 million to the actor, the judge decided that he was only getting 350,000 from that amount.

When considering Amber Heard's countersuit, in which she claimed that her reputation and livelihood had been damaged by Depp and his lawyer's accusations of defamation, the jury gave her some credit.

The countersuit had three counts and demanded $100 million. The jury agreed with only one of those three counts and awarded Heard damages of $2 million. That's a lot less than what Depp is going to get from her. And it's pocket money when considering her original claim: $100 million.

Managers, friends, psychologists, relatives, a makeup artist: they all testified in a six-week-long trial that monopolized (social) media. And then there were the two protagonists of the confrontation that some media have called 'the biggest libel trial of the 21st century': Johnny Depp, the accuser, and Amber Heard, the accused.

Of the 100 hours of witness testimony in the trial, which lasted from April 11 to May 27, several entire days were filled with the words of Amber Heard and Johnny Depp themselves. Their stories were excruciatingly private and oftentimes contradicted each other.

On May 27, the attorneys on both sides made their closing statements. The 7-person jury was then sent to its quarters to deliberate. In Fairfax County, Virginia, juries need to reach a unanimous decision, and it was uncertain how much time the judges would need to decide on this case. In the end, they agreed on their verdict quite promptly.

Johnny Depp had sued Amber Heard over an op-ed she wrote in The Washington Post in 2018. In that piece, she said: "two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse." Although she did not mention his name and only said she "represented" domestic abuse, it appeared that she was referring to Johnny Depp, her husband of two years prior.

Johnny Depp claims Heard is lying. Moreover, he says, the negative publicity about his relationship with Heard, particularly because of this Washington Post op-ed and another article in British newspaper The Sun (a libel case he lost in 2020), cost him his good reputation in Hollywood and tens of millions of income for new movies in the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' and 'Fantastic Beasts' franchises.

Johnny Depp sued Amber Heard for $50 million. Heard responded by countersuing Depp for $100 million for defamation, claiming that she, too, lost professional opportunities after his allegations of her deceit.

As the trial was held in Fairfax, Virginia, where laws about public access to court proceedings are more lenient than in many other American states, people around the world were able to follow the case through live TV and streaming.

The battle in Virginia - a remarkably long and painful trial - was yet another chapter in a list of legal and media conflicts that began when the actress filed for divorce in 2016.

Since then, accusations, lawsuits, and leaks to the press have followed one another. They have implicated Heard's and Depp's friends and famous colleagues as well.

The list of witnesses for the Depp/Heard trial included a range of celebrities that we would normally expect on a red carpet. Both actors have illustrious friends and confidants.

Many of the potential witnesses did not end up testifying, however. Let's see some of the names of people who did, and those who did not, tell their stories at the trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard.

The star of 'Animal Kingdom' and an ex of Johnny Depp, Ellen Barkin was one of Amber Heard's witnesses. She recalled a fight with Depp where the actor threw a wine bottle in her direction. Barkin had also testified about Depp's substance abuse and temperament in the 2020 lawsuit against The Sun.

Johnny Depp's ex-girlfriend, supermodel Kate Moss, appeared in a brief video call to debunk the story by the Heard team that Depp would have pushed her down the stairs when they were dating in the 1990s. He "never pushed me, kicked me, or threw me down any stairs," she declared.

James Wan, director of the 'Aquaman' saga, and Zack Snyder, director of 'The Justice League', were also on the witness lists of the litigating parties. They did not get called into the court room, however.

With regard to these movies and Heard's career after appearing in them, her talent agent Jessica Kovacevic - who did testify in trial - said that "she believes Heard should have landed more endorsements and jobs afterward than she did." She missed this chance, the talent agent said, because of the media struggle with her ex-husband, and not because her performance in the superhero saga was bad.

Remarkable names on the lists included James Franco and Elon Musk. Johnny Depp accuses them of having had affairs with Amber Heard while she was married to him.

In the case of James Franco, he and Amber Heard met while shooting 'Pineapple Express' in 2008. Since then, they have maintained a good friendship. According to Johnny Depp, it was more than that.

Johnny Depp also accuses Elon Musk of having started a relationship with Amber Heard in 2016, before she and Depp had broken up.

In the end, however, neither alleged 'fling' of Amber Heard was called into the Fairfax County courtroom to testify.

Another testimony that could have added to the already electric atmosphere in the courtroom was that of Paul Bettany (Vision in 'WandaVision'). He had some damaging material on his phone: text messages in which Johnny Depp incriminated himself.

In the texts, Johnny Depp spoke of "burning" and "drowning" Amber Heard and having relations with the lifeless body of the actress. The actress's legal team presented these texts as proof of the violent character of her ex-husband and asked Depp about them. Bettany, for his part, didn't need to be physically present to comment on the messages he had received.

From his end, Depp called several witnesses who claimed that Heard was making exaggerated or false claims of abuse by the actor. They included his sister Christi Dembrowski, his friend Isaac Baruch, Amber Heard's former assistant Kate James, and Tara Roberts, the manager of Depp's private island.

A much-discussed episode in the couple's marriage was a fight in Australia that resulted in Johnny Depp losing part of his finger. A nurse and the house manager of Depp's apartment at the time, talked in great detail about the bloody situation they discovered after the fight was over. However, definite proof that Heard had been responsible for severing Depp's finger was lacking.

Amber Heard's sister (Whitney Henriquez) and her friend Raquel Pennington gave testimonies on Heard's behalf, claiming they saw the marriage deteriorate with Heard as the underdog. Her acting coach Kristina Sexton recalled that the actress auditioned for fewer roles as the relationship with Depp progressed - a statement corroborating Heard's claim that Depp wouldn't let her work as much as she wanted.

In the aftermath of her unhappy marriage, Amber Heard had claimed that she had to cover up bruises on her face and a bald spot on her skull when appearing on the Late Late Show with James Corden in December 2015. She'd alleged that Depp had inflicted the wounds. The actress's friend and former makeup artist, Melanie Inglessis, corroborated this story during the trial.

(Image: a selfie James Corden made with his guests during the talkshow in question)

As part of his argument that Amber Heard would be dishonest, Depp's team has discussed the donation that Amber Heard said she was going to make with the 7 million dollars obtained from the divorce settlement. She was to give the money to LA's Children Hospital Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Depp's lawyer claims that Heard promised to make the donation as "a calculated and manipulative lie" in order to "tip the scales against Mr Depp from the very beginning." It was allegedly a ploy to make Amber Heard look good in any future litigation.

And it seems to have worked, The Independent suggested. The judge in Depp's 2020 libel case against British newspaper The Sun, commented as he decided in favor of Heard that the "donation of the $7 million to charity is hardly the act one would expect of a gold digger."

Regardless of the numbers coming out of this trial, both parties lost. They had to disclose to the world a tragic story about domestic violence, and the question remains how this trial will affect both of their careers in the long run.