According to Heard’s attorney, one of the jurors who served on the Depp vs. Heard jury was never called in for jury duty and lied to get into the trial.
In the court filing from Friday, July 8, Heard's lawyer, Elaine Bredehoft, wrote, “Juror No. 15 was not the individual summoned for jury duty on April 11, 2022, and therefore was not part of the jury panel and could not have properly served on the jury at this trial. Therefore, a mistrial should be declared and a new trial ordered."
The person who had been called for jury duty shares a last name with Juror 15 and they live in the same household in Fairfax County, Virginia. However, the one who was actually called for jury duty was born in 1945 and would have been 77 years old at the time of the trial, whereas the person who served was 52 years old.
The names of both the fake and real juror selected have been redacted in the court filing, according to Deadline.
Juror 15 submitted false information to the jury questionnaire website, including submitting a fake birthdate to get around the court’s safeguards against fraudulent jurors.
Bredehoft argued in the filing, "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. This was a high-profile case, where the fact and date of the jury trial were highly publicized prior to and after the issuance of the juror summonses."
This latest filing is in addition to Heard’s motion to overturn the verdict from July 1, which also brought into question the legitimacy of Juror 15’s identity.
"The information on the jury panel list appears to be inconsistent with the identity and demographics of one of the Jurors," Bredehoft wrote. "Juror No. 15 was apparently born in 1970, not 1945, as reported to and relied upon by the parties — including Ms. Heard — in selecting a jury panel."
Due to the widely-televised nature of the defamation trial, Bredehoft has said that it was impossible for media attention, which largely supported Depp, to not influence the jury’s opinion.
"They went home every night. They have families. The families are on social media,” Bredehoft told NBC's "Today" show. “We had a 10-day break in the middle because of the judicial conference.”
She went on, "There's no way they couldn't have been influenced by it. And it was horrible. It was really, really lopsided."
The post Amber Heard Lawyer Says Depp Verdict Needs To Be Tossed, Wrong Juror Was Seated At Trial appeared first on The Mother of All Nerds.
Amber Heard Lawyer Says Depp Verdict Needs To Be Tossed, Wrong Juror Was Seated At Trial
Source: Pinoy Inquirer News
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