Johnny Depp deserves retrial in 'wife beater' case, lawyer tells appeal court

In documents filed at the Court of Appeal on Thursday, barrister David Sherborne said that Johnny Depp deserves a retrial in his "wife-beater" suit against The Sun because Justice Andrew Nicol gave the verdict without proper assessment of the case.

Sherborne asked that Nicol's judgment be "set aside and order a new trial" because the actor "did not receive a fair trial" in the first place. The judge "failed to undertake any, or an adequate analysis, of Ms. Heard's shifting account, despite the importance of consistency as consideration of a witness' testimony."

Depp's legal team asserted that Nicol's "uncritical acceptance of her account of events is manifestly unsafe." He did not consider that the "Rum Diary" actress had been untruthful in her accounts given the evidence presented during the trial.

Nicol "concluded that the appellant [Depp] was guilty of serious physical assaults without taking account of or even acknowledging that Ms. Heard had been untruthful in her evidence, without testing her account against the documentary evidence and the evidence of other witnesses, and without making any findings that he disbelieved those witnesses," The Guardian quoted Sherborne in his request to the Court of Appeal.

The barrister likewise argued that Nicol gave his verdict without providing the "necessary analysis to explain or justify that conclusion. Instead, he derived his condition by finding "for the 'victim.'"

He "excluded relevant evidence from his consideration, ignored or dismissed as irrelevant matters that substantially undermined Ms. Heard, made findings unsupported by the evidence, and failed to assess whether her allegations could withstand proper scrutiny." Depp's attorney contested that Nicol "failed to properly assess her credibility by reference to documentary evidence, photographs, recordings or otherwise."

"This was a very public judgment, reached by a single judge, making devastating findings of extremely serious criminal offences having been committed, and where this has had wider-ranging implications for the public at large, particularly victims, or those wrongly accused, of alleged domestic abuse," Sherborne concluded.

Nicol's verdict that Depp indeed physically assaulted Heard on 12 out of 14 occasions during their marriage may have serious implications in his career. For starters, Warner Bros. asked him to resign from "Fantastic Beasts 3." The actor will stop at nothing to clear his name though, and will face his ex-wife again in Virginia next year for his defamation suit.