There has to be something about philosophy and onions here. Multilayered, viciously attacks you unnecessarily, makes your eyes water on use, delicious when cut up into manageable parts and prepared, better as a side dish and not a whole meal...
Top female Twitch streamer Amouranth stream turns dark as an apparent abusive husband comes to light
- Thread starter Dwarvenhobble
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Cops don't ask questions like this to get "the full story". Cops are structurally part of the prosecution, their job is to deliver cases to prosecutors with maximal likelihood of conviction. In other words, present a case in which a prosecutor would feel confident enough to move forward with indictment, because they'll at least get a plea deal out of it. The guilt of the accused in fact has very little to do with it.
"The full story", as you put it, includes discovering potential defensive strategies that would scare away a prosecutor. SA/DA/IPV is already near-impossible to prosecute as-is; often, the only support for victims' claims is hearsay or one person's word against the other, and physical evidence tends to be relegated to photos and forensic examinations -- and the handling and processing of SAFE kits is an entire thread's worth of conversation alone. Being prosecutors' key performance indicator is conviction rate, and are therefore notoriously fickle about actually effecting justice, prosecutors are especially skittish around SA/DA/IPV cases.
Part and parcel of why, if I remember the statistics right, 93-96% of sexual assault indictments (compared to 90% of all criminal indictments) result in plea bargaining down to a non-sexual offense. This is a huge chunk of why sex offender registries don't really work as advertised, and are more often than not zero-risk strategies for politicians out to be perceived as "tough on crime" despite the known drawbacks of the policies -- offenders don't get put on registries when/if they plea bargain down to non-sexual offenses.
This isn't a good-faith strategy -- or juridical landscape that emphasizes it -- towards any party. Well, other than prosecutors and their apparati. Perpetrators are beneficiaries by incident, not by intent.
It is like that saying from COPS. "All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law."
Problem these days is people just decide people are guilty on accusations alone. And to make matters worse, they dont apologize if you come out innocent. There are still people on Amber Heard's side despite that trial for example.
Problem these days is people just decide people are guilty on accusations alone. And to make matters worse, they dont apologize if you come out innocent. There are still people on Amber Heard's side despite that trial for example.
Amber Heard was the one on trial. Johnny Depp sued her for defamation and Heard was found to be liable by a jury.
Johnny Depp is not "innocent". Suing someone for defamation and winning means that there is insufficient evidence to prove that the defamatory statements are true. Members of the Jury have since made clear that the basis of their decision is not whether Depp abused Amber Heard, which is undeniably true given the clear evidence of reciprocal abuse between them, but whether there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate the specific claims that were made. In particular, that his abuse was physical and sexually in nature.
Another problem with the idea of Depp's innocence is that the trial was, to put it bluntly, a complete fucking shitshow which rapidly turned into an unlicensed adaptation of Camus' The Stranger and in which both the jury and the general public to whom the whole mess was inexplicably televised were essentially just drawing conclusions based on perceived credibility. Ironically, rather than evidencing any kind of commitment to the presumption of innocence, the discourse around the trial illustrated an overwhelming antagonism towards Heard and a willingness to presume a frankly ludicrous level of insight into her character and mental state based on insignificant abnormalities in body language and choice of words.
Incidentally, while that might seem like harmless entertainment to you, it is a terrifying object lesson for anyone who is neurodivergent or mentally ill, because it demonstrates that the willingness of people to presume innocence is heavily influenced by the degree to which a person's reactions and emotional state appear "normal," doubly so if that person is a woman. As long as that is the case, it is also incredibly difficult to trust any ruling made on this basis.
So yes, that trial does illustrate the willingness of many people to decide guilt on accusations alone, but not in the way you are claiming. It illustrates that someone in a position of wealth and power whose reputation takes a hit due to alleged or perceived abuse can launch lawsuit after lawsuit until they finally get the result they want, then claim they have been exonerated and be widely believed despite that not being the case.
It's not easy to win a defamation case as the jury has to believe the accused used actual malice, it's not just the jury found the claims false and that's it.
So, that was a civil case, not a criminal case. There is no presumption of innocence in civil court, and the evidentiary standard in civil court is "preponderance of the evidence" and not "reasonable doubt". In other words, while the burden of proof still rests on the claimant (prosecution in the case of criminal court, plaintiff in the case of civil), in civil court the plaintiff must only demonstrate their claims are more likely to be true than the defendant's counter-claims.
As for the rest, guess what. That's what mainstream media does. "Trial by media" isn't unique to post-internet discourse; hell, it's not even unique to 20th Century discourse. The trials of Lizzie Borden and Alfred Dreyfus -- both in the 1890's -- were the two first examples of "trial by media" of which I can think in the modern era. I'd actually argue the trials of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators were examples of "trial by media", save for period British media being less free, and more royalist propaganda (not that's changed much).
Sure. But what difference does that make? Its still entirely valid to point out the holes in credibility that trial-by-media results in.
Besides, there are degrees. Not that many civil cases are televised, and it dramatically prejudices the proceedings when it happens.
The far more important question in that, is whose credibility does "trial by media" throw into doubt -- compared to whose credibility "trial be media" ought to throw in doubt?
As was pointed out, the media landscape into which the civil trial was birthed brought forth three different narratives: support for Heard, generally of, by, and for mainstream talking heads; much-maligned grassroots support for Depp heavily supported by indie talking heads; and what actually happened in court. We should all be able to recognize which of those narratives was ultimately least influential in shaping popular discourse. It was the one not driving clicks and ad revenue.
No, not many civil cases are televised. Just those that cater to profit-driven "if it bleeds, it leads" media sensibility, whether that involves celebrities or salacious case facts (or personalities) that lend themselves well to media sensationalism. Or to put this another way, zero fucks would have been given about Casey Anthony if she didn't have nice tits, "tighty whitey" caboose, and "closet dominatrix librarian" RBF.
The Heard/Depp trial was a hat trick of celebrity and wealth, salaciousness, and identity politics out of which no media conglomerate or YouTube grifter could resist wringing every last cent.
And, I'm gonna need a citation media coverage -- or the nature of it -- was prejudicial to the case. Especially considering Heard's counsel tried that angle to petition for mistrial, which was soundly rejected by the court.
Firstly, I don't think the difference between civil and criminal law is particularly significant to the surrounding discourse when many people are seemingly confused about who was on trial in the first place.
Secondly, defamation is weird. While technically decided by the preponderance of evidence, responsibility typically rests with the person accused of defamation to demonstrate that their statements were not defamatory, usually by presenting evidence that the statements were either true or were reasonable based on commonly held beliefs at the time.
There are degrees of media exposure, and in this case the degree of exposure was clearly and obviously inappropriate to anyone willing to give it a moment of thought.
If, in a criminal case, a witness was expected to give testimonial evidence regarding alleged violent or sexual abuse against them from an intimate partner, then they would be immediately recognized as vulnerable and a degree of privacy provided. In this case, due to the fact it was a civil court and the person alleging to have been abused was in fact the one on trial, that potential vulnerability seems to have been entirely ignored. Depp's lawyers attempted to submit nude photographs of Heard as evidence (thus ensuring they would be displayed in court) as well as using the fact that she once worked as a stripper as character evidence, both of which were mercifully not admitted. On the other hand, while Depp made very clear that he was quite happy about the media exposure the trial recieved, the trial included claims about his medical history that absolutely should have remained confidential.
We should not be using 19th century trials as the basis for what constitutes a reasonable level of scrutiny or public involvement. Only a hundred years before Dreyfus was tried in France, Robert-Francois Damiens was tortured and horrifically torn to pieces in a public square, yet that doesn't make a bit of difference to what we should tolerate now. Spectacular justice belongs in history.
Malice in this context simply means having the desire to hurt someone, a desire that is typically not uncommon or hard to evidence in cases of acrimonious divorce.
Depp, for example, once joked with friends about wanting to murder Heard and rape her corpse.
We know the answer to that: generally, women, immigrants, the poor, or anybody the tabloid press doesn't much like.
We know the answer to that, too: nobody's (well, except the press, I suppose). A bunch of reporters shouldn't be able to guide the outcome of a trial in any direction. It's impossible to completely negate their influence, of course, but it's far from impossible to limit it.
It would not be possible for a juror to miss the overwhelming deluge of "Look how fucking crazy she is in this video!?" and "Depp lawyer DESTROYS Heard lawyer OMFG!!" clips posted in their millions throughout the trial. I was pretty much unable to go online without being inundated by that stuff.
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That's not what malice means in the legal sense. "Joked" being the key word...
I'd argue the general public's ignorance towards the difference between civil and criminal court, and civil and criminal procedure, was precisely the phenomenon exploited by media to muddy the waters for profit -- to the point, as you said, people were unable to recognize who was plaintiff and who was defendant.
That doesn't change the burden of proof or the evidentiary standard, that's just how the nature of how counter-claims must be in defamation cases. At the end of the day, juries are still deciding whose claims are more likely to be true based upon evidence presented.
By the way, interesting side note to this: truth actually isn't an absolute defense against defamation in the way people conceive it. That is to say, demonstrating truth means victory for defendants by default, regardless of other circumstances. There actually have been defamation suits in which defendant's claims were true, but because of other intervening variables (aggravating factors, proof of malice beyond doubt, untimely verification of facts), juries ruled in favor of plaintiffs anyways.
Back when I had Lexis and Westlaw access, I snooped around to find examples of this due to an argument I was in at the time. Among other cases, I actually found one (from Washington state if I remember right) where the claim of dispute was only discovered to be true by accident during discovery. Up until that point, the defendants -- a newspaper outlet and its editor-in-chief -- had been operating under full belief the claims were false...to the point plaintiffs were able to provide evidence the EiC insisted the story be run with the specific intent of defaming the plaintiff. They had a tape recording of a staff meeting, if I remember right.
Trial judge wasn't having it, denied defense's motion for dismissal, and the plaintiff went on to win the case. The evidence against the outlet and its EiC was so damning, the truth-value of the original claim was deemed irrelevant.
Actually, my point is media coverage of court cases under (especially late-stage) capitalism is unreasoned by default, and this has pretty much always been the case across the entire legal spectrum whether we care to admit it or not. What was true for Alfred Dreyfus, and Sacco and Vanzetti, was equally true for Adolf Eichmann, O.J. Simpson, Casey Anthony, and Kyle Rittenhouse: truth rarely withstands the rigor of profit-hungry media.
That's what I'm getting at. The louder and more obnoxious the noise machine gets, the less credibility it ought to have. We just exist at this time at an unholy nexus between popular media illiteracy, late-stage capitalism, and dystopian secularized prosperity doctrine, where we treat the biggest assholes in the room as the most credible for no other reason than they have the biggest megaphones and make the most money. That's as true for the likes of Nancy Grace and Piers Morgan, as it is third-rate Gawker content millers and YouTube outrage grifters within their individual blast radii.
Exposure is not synonymous to influence, however. Just because someone sees a given unit of content, does not mean they consume that unit, and even consuming that unit does not mean the consumer finds it persuasive.
On the other hand: people are easily-led, easily-influenced knobheads. If people see one perspective endlessly presented to them, day after day, a lot of them end up absorbing it and buying into it.
I do not want our court proceedings to be entrusted to the critical thinking capabilities of joe public, who is convinced immigration is about 10x higher than it actually is solely because the tabloids don't like immigrants.
It's almost as if propaganda/advertising have been enormously important for most of written history.
If she needed people they have women centers all over the place and she could seek refuge faster then any immigrant seeking asylum for safety in fear of execution.
She will be able to get on her feet faster then any educated young man who is able to lift 100lbs or have an IQ bigger then most super-computer. This is like a cartoon.
She will be able to get on her feet faster then any educated young man who is able to lift 100lbs or have an IQ bigger then most super-computer. This is like a cartoon.