Michelle Goldberg: The Amber Heard Verdict Was a Travesty. Others Will Follow.

During the trial, the jurors heard a recording in which Depp sneered at Heard, using an obscenity, “I head butted you in the forehead. That doesn’t break a nose.” (He claimed it was an accident.) They heard from a makeup artist who testified about covering up Heard’s bruises. They heard a text Depp wrote in which he said, using an obscenity, that he hoped Heard’s “rotting corpse was decomposing in the trunk of a Honda Civic,” and another one in which he fantasized about having sex with her burnt corpse. They saw video of him rampaging around their kitchen, smashing cabinets while she tried to calm him down. They heard a recording of him screaming at her for daring to speak to him in an “authoritative” way, and another in which he threatened to cut himself while she begged him to put the knife down.

I don’t make it a habit to follow along with trials about domestic abuse, but it’s been impossible to completely ignore this trial over the past few weeks. Here at the end of it, all I can say is that while there seem to be no real heroes in this story, the decision is perplexing, but what really bothers me is the adoration poured onto Depp who “did nothing wrong!” Few things in mainstream culture have made me as disgusted as what I’ve seen from people during this trial.