Amber Heard took the stand for a second day Thursday in the defamation suit filed by her former husband, fellow actor Johnny Depp, who accused her of falsely alleging he abused her.
Heard took the stand Wednesday for more than two hours and described meeting Depp, the beginnings of their romantic relationship and when she alleges things turned abusive. She accused Depp of taking cocaine and abusing her, as well as performing a cavity search on her after he accused her of stealing his drugs.
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Court adjourns for a week; judge reminds jury no social media
Fairfax County Circuit Judge Penney Azcarate ended Amber Heard's testimony for the day at about 5:30 p.m. ET, adjourning the court for about a weeklong break.
Court will resume 9 a.m. ET on May 16 and continue until closing arguments scheduled for May 27. Azcarate reminded the jury not to read, watch or listen to anything about the case in the interim.
That includes television, news and social media sites, the judge emphasized.
"What you learn about this case is limited to what you learn in the four walls of this courtroom when proceedings are underway, OK?" she said.
Heard is expected to continue her witness testimony May 16, including cross-examination by Johnny Depp's legal team.
'I just decided to believe that it wouldn’t happen again,' Heard says of alleged violence
Amber Heard said she flew to the Bahamas for Christmas in 2015 with Johnny Depp's kids. Around that time, she said, the two spoke "with the understanding we were done."
She said she was heartbroken at missing Christmas with his family. She said experiencing domestic violence was like losing a piece of herself.
"For every hit, every instance of violence, every time I was choked, every single one of these instances, is like a heavy coin put into a piggy bank. ... It’s almost like, for each one of these things that happens, you lose the will or resolve to leave," she said. "You know, it’s like every single heavy coin you put in this piggy bank is like an investment into the future.”
Eventually, she said, the metaphorical piggy bank, full of future investments, became a weighted ball.
“This time was the last time, because it couldn’t be worse than this, right? It couldn’t be worse. And part of me thought: 'Well, maybe it just needed to get this bad to get, you know, like now we can’t go back. There’s no way this could happen again,'” she said.
“I just decided to believe that it wouldn’t happen again,” she said. “This is the last time, ’cause it couldn’t get worse than this, right?
Heard alleges she was head-butted, repeatedly punched by Depp in one instance
Amber Heard alleged she was head-butted and repeatedly punched in the face by Johnny Depp in an attack she believed was going to end in death.
Heard said Depp sounded a like "an animal in pain" as he kept screaming, "'I f----- hate you, I f----- hate you, I f----- hate you,' over and over."
"He was just pummeling me," she said, describing Depp on top of her in the alleged attack. "I thought: 'This his is how I die. He's going to kill me now. He's going to kill me, and he won't even have realized it."
Heard on volatile Australian trip: 'I felt destroyed'
Amber Heard told jurors that she was "destroyed" and that her marriage to Johnny Depp was irreparably harmed after a series of violent attacks in Australia.
"I felt destroyed, like my heart was broken," she told the court about the alleged March 2015 incidents. "I didn’t know what to do."
Heard said that as she was packing to leave, she saw evidence of massive cocaine use that she somehow hadn't seen before.
“I found all these empty bags, coke bags, dime bags with white residue on them and in them. They were in books, in the bedside table. There were so many I wondered how I didn’t see it before," she said.
"So I was worried he would die. I was worried that we couldn't come back from what happened. I was worried that there was just no way to turn this around. There was no going back. Shock."
Heard admits hitting Depp in defense of younger sister
Amber Heard said the first time she "landed one" on Johnny Depp in a fight was in defense of her younger sister, Whitney.
The argument was sparked when Heard accused Depp of cheating on him with a woman he'd been with years before, saying she found out he had been to the woman's home after she and Depp were married.
Depp and Heard were in their Los Angeles penthouse weeks after their dispute in Australia.
"I immediately, like, confronted him about it," Heard said. "I was ... I didn't care in that moment if he did kill me."
She told the court she yelled obscenities at Depp and at one point went into a neighboring penthouse, which Depp also owned, to see her sister, who had been staying there.
Heard alleged that Depp followed her there and grabbed at her. She returned to their shared penthouse and onto the top floor with her sister, she said. He threw a can up at them, then "bolted" up the stairs and grabbed the back of her head, Heard said.
"I just remember this brief struggle we had. ... Whitney, my sister, all of a sudden put herself in between," Heard said.
In that moment, Heard said, she feared her sister might fall down the stairs as she saw Depp raise his hand to assault her.
"And I swung at him," Heard said. "In all my relationship to date with Johnny, I hadn't landed a blow. ... For the first time I hit him, like actually hit him square in the face. But he didn't push my sister down the stairs."
Heard said she had previously fought back at Depp, flailing her limbs and trying to block any blows, but never once "landed anything."
"Johnny kind of looked stunned and then laughed at me," Heard said. "And then he hit me again."
Heard recalls seeing blood on the walls after alleged assault
After she described being penetrated by a bottle in what she alleged was an assault by Depp, Amber Heard said she woke up to hear Marilyn Manson music playing. She then noticed a brown substance on the wall, which she later identified as blood, she said.
Depp had previously testified about his finger’s having been cut off and about using his blood and paint to write messages on the walls of one of the couple's homes. In his testimony, Depp claimed Heard had become enraged, throwing a bottle of vodka at him and severing his finger.
According to Heard's account in court, after she was assaulted the night before, she woke up to discover the messages on the wall and later discovered that Depp's finger was injured.
"You could see where it looked like he ran out of blood, because the markings became clearly letters ... like, I could see where he had clearly run out of blood or wasn't bleeding enough and went and got paint," she said. "You could see both."
Depp testified that he initially lied and told doctors he had hurt his finger in accordion doors.
"I didn't want to disclose that it had been Ms. Heard that had thrown a vodka bottle at me and took my finger off," he claimed.
Heard testified that she was also bleeding.
"I wasn't thinking about that [pain]. I was heartbroken. I realized eventually that I could be hurt, because I was bleeding. But I convinced myself it wasn't broken or that the bottle wasn't broken or it would be a lot worse, and the discomfort paled in comparison [to the heartbreak]. ... I had just married this man," Heard said. "I just married him."
Heard breaks down in tears recounting 2015 fight
As she recounted a March 2015 fight in Australia, Amber Heard broke down in sobs on the witness stand as she alleged that Johnny Depp had penetrated her with a bottle.
"I can't believe I have to do this," Heard said at one point.
Depp hadn't slept for some time and had been screaming on the phone at the time, Heard said. She told the court she had tried to calm him down and urge him to sleep.
But Depp, who had been drinking, was in a rage, Heard testified.
"He was just belligerent, belligerent, throwing things," Heard said. "Screaming at me."
Heard said that she had gone down to the kitchenette in the home to make Depp something to eat but that he slammed her up against the wall and she hit her head. Depp called her names, telling her that she had ruined his life and that he hated her, she told the court.
"At some point I shove him hard, to get him off me, and he shoved me back," Heard said. "And he said, 'Do you want to go, little girl?'"
At some point in the argument, Heard said, she threw a bottle on the floor. Depp choked her during the fight, Heard said, ripped her nightgown and pushed a bottle against her pubic bone.
"Johnny had the bottle inside of me, and he's shoving it into me over and over again," Heard said.
Heard recalls wedding day with Depp
Amber Heard testified that she felt joy the day she married Johnny Depp, when they codified their "complicated" union.
They tied the knot on Feb. 3, 2015, during a simple ceremony before a justice of the peace at the home of Depp's mother. Heard said she had talked herself into believing it was the right things to do.
"We were making the right decision," Heard told jurors, recalling her frame of mind on her wedding day. "It was magic. I was marrying the love of my life. It was complicated. But I thought it was the love of my life."
Depp, in email to Heard, said he was a 'savage'
An apologetic Johnny Depp pleaded for Amber Heard's forgiveness and vowed to seek counseling to cure the "savage" in their toxic relationship, according to an email shown to jurors.
"I'm sorry for being less ... For your disappointment in me ... For my behavior. I'm a f------- savage," Depp wrote in the Dec. 18, 2014, email to Heard that was entered into evidence.
The message was a typical one, Heard said, after violent episodes.
"The language he used after particularly violent episodes was ‘savage,' 'monster,' 'devil.' That's what we ended up both calling his other side," Heard said.
"This is typical of the apologies I would get when he took it too far physically. I was encouraged, because I thought it meant that he understood he could really hurt me. Sometimes I didn't think he understood how much he could hurt me, physically."
Court breaks for lunch; Heard testimony will run longer into the day
The court took an hour lunch break at 1 p.m., with plans to continue Amber Heard's testimony until about 5:30 p.m.
Fairfax County Circuit Judge Penney Azcarate alerted the court at the start of the day about to an altered schedule going forward to make up lost time. The court will break for a week after Thursday, and it will start an hour earlier beginning May 16 to move the trial along.