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What did Depp v Heard teach us? That justice and reality TV are incompatible | Catherine Bennett
The US defamation trial has shown us how ‘transparency’ in court translates, which is into a festival of misogyny
Asked on CBS about losing Depp v Heard, Amber Heard’s lawyer, Elaine Bredehoft, put much of the blame on the courtroom cameras and the brutal atmosphere they generated. “It was like a Roman colosseum.”
Actually, for the squeamish, it was much nicer than that. Those of us watching Depp’s lawyer, Camille Vasquez, dismember Heard could claim to be acting in a spirit of sober inquiry and debate, motivated purely by the wish to advance understanding of US legal procedures. For instance, I learned, between gawping at Heard’s ornate plaits and Vasquez’s white costumes, that it’s legal in the state of Virginia for cameras to livestream a celebrity witness offering excruciating testimony about sexual abuse, yards from her alleged assailant.
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