Controversy over the trial reporting between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard

Follow Variety, millions of people around the world have paid attention to the legal allegation trial between Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard. Penney Azcarate, chief justice of the Fairfax County Court, presiding over the trial maintained his impartiality in making decisions regarding the testimony of both parties.

However, one of the decisions that influenced the trial in terms of media, approved by this judge, was to allow Court TV Live broadcast of events in the courtroom through two cameras.

Follow Law & Crime, which streamed the entire lawsuit, viewership grew exponentially as the trial progressed. When Johnny Depp testified midweek, its channel’s live viewership peaked at 1,247,163, more than double the peak in his initial testimony in early April.

And over the past few weeks, reaction clips of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard cut from the trial have inevitably gone viral on social media that have gone viral around the world.

Viewers have seen somewhat gruesome testimonies from Amber Heard. She alleges that Depp sexually assaulted and abused her to the point that she feared she would be killed.

In his final appearance as a witness, Heard said it was “humiliating” to be forced to relive those moments in front of the camera. Johnny Depp has denied amber Heard’s allegations and countered that his ex-wife fabricated it to destroy his career.

Amber Heard’s team tried to get the cameras out of the courtroom but were unsuccessful. At a pre-trial hearing on February 25, attorney Elaine Bredehoft noted that there was a lot of media attention and interest from anti-Amber Heard groups around the world.

“What they’re going to do is look at anything that’s not going well for Amber Heard and take it out of context and spread it around the internet,” Bredehoft said.

Depp’s attorney Ben Chew, on the other hand, welcomed the live broadcast of the trial. He said that Amber Heard treated Johnny Depp as trash thanks to the media, so she was not allowed to hide these things at the trial.

“Johnny Depp believes in transparency,” Chew said.

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s trial live TV controversy

In pondering the matter, Judge Azcarate noted that she received numerous requests from the media and was personally responsible for keeping the proceedings open to observers. If she is not allowed to film, she worries that reporters will go to the court and then things will be more complicated.

“I don’t see any good reason not to do it,” Azcarate said.

Allowing live coverage has given viewers a chance to see all the evidence, assess the credibility of witnesses, and make their own decisions without being filtered out by anything by news outlets. However, some observers worry that Azcarate’s decision will also create a sense of fear among victims of domestic violence.

Michele Dauber, a professor at Stanford Law School, said: “Allowing this trial to be televised is the worst decision I can think of in light of recent gender and sexual violence. this”.

Michelle Simpson Tuegel, an attorney who has represented sex crime victims in high-profile cases, said her clients often don’t even want their real names used in court filings. public. Now, she worries that they will be scared to appear on a live broadcast.

“They see someone not only being broadcast live, but being ‘torn apart’ during the trial. Live streaming just makes what the victims are going through increase,” she said.

Under Virginia law, the trial judge has almost complete discretion over whether to allow cameras in the courtroom. However, the statute lists a number of prohibitions, including testimony from “victims and victims’ families of sex crimes”.

At the February 25 hearing, Bredehoft argued that Heard was a victim of sexual assault and therefore the camera was not authorized to be used. Azcarate disagrees, saying the rule does not apply to civil cases.

According to some attorneys who practice in the state, cameras are rare in Virginia courts. A Fairfax County judge allowed cameras to enter the trial of Julio Blanco Garcia in 2013, who was found guilty of the murder of a 19-year-old woman. But that’s an exception, said Joe King, a criminal defense attorney based in Alexandria.

King represented Charles Severance, a man who was tried in Fairfax County and found guilty of three murders in 2015. The case was notorious locally, but the judge denied the request to air, instead. Only video recording is allowed in there. King said the judge also denied media requests to air another murder trial he handled in Alexandria.

“It’s very special in Virginia. We’ve always objected to that. There’s a lot going on in a big trial. I think lawyers will be distracted by the cameras,” he said.

In 2012, a judge in Charlottesville denied camera permission at the trial and sentenced George Huguely, a UVA lacrosse goalie convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend. The judge held that cameras would be harmful to witnesses and jurors in a civil case in. Media organizations appealed the ruling, but the Virginia Supreme Court upheld the judge’s decision.

Attorney Rhonda Quagliana, who represents Huguely, said she was worried the cameras would make it difficult for him to get a fair trial. But she does not object to the camera under any circumstances.