Amber Heard wants a retrial with a new jury. Can’t say I blame her. She could hardly do worse; the jury she had awarded Johnny Depp $15 million and her only $2 million.
She alleges one of the jurors was an imposter. Here’s what apparently happened. A jury summons was sent to a home of two people with the same last name, who are 25 years apart in age. The summons was for the person born in 1945, but the person who served on the jury was born in 1970.
This isn’t a case of a homeless person wandering into the courthouse and seating himself in the jury box, but her lawyers will try to portray it as something close to that. The law spells out the process for selecting jurors, and it’s hard to see how someone who isn’t even in the jury pool can legally be a juror.
The facts don’t seem to be in dispute; rather, it wasn’t caught until now. The judge didn’t spot it, the lawyers didn’t, nobody did. And it could be material to the outcome; Heard can argue an older person might have been more sympathetic to her. Maybe the younger member of the household is a Depp fan.
I’ve never heard of a situation like this before, and I don’t know how courts handle it. There’s a couple possibilities. The court could rule it invalidates the verdict and Heard is entitled to a new trial. Or the court could rule she failed to timely object, and as the juror was otherwise qualified, the verdict will stand. This refers to a legal doctrine called “laches” (see definition here).
Something that isn’t clear from the news story is whether the two residents have exactly the same name. If one was Jill Smith and the other was Susan Smith, Depp will have a stronger argument that Heard’s lawyers should have caught it at the beginning of the trial. If they’re both named Ellen Smith (e.g., mother and daughter), Heard can argue it’s a discrepancy she couldn’t be expected to catch, and point out that even the judge didn’t spot it.
One thing you can rely on, though, is that real judges aren’t likely to do what movie judges do (see video below).
Update (7/13/22): The judge rejected Heard’s motion for a new trial, saying there was no evidence of “fraud or wrongdoing,” and the disputed juror “met the statutory requirements for jury service.” (Read story here.) Other news stories say an elderly man was summoned, and his son who lives at the same address showed up. Thus, the “mistaken juror” test appears to be whether there was actual misconduct, and if not, whether the juror was otherwise qualified to serve.
https://youtu.be/KfLCUTIP9WQ