Detailed medical views in the sixth and final week of trials in the spectacular Depp/Heard trial. The jury saw photos of blood and scraps of skin, which hand surgeon Richard Moore added his expertise to.
According to Johnny Depp, the injury that eventually led to the partial loss of his fingertip came from a fight with Amber Heard in March 2015. According to Depp, Heard threw a vodka bottle at him during their altercation in Australia.
When asked, the orthopedic specialist said the splatter photos “didn’t match” the description of the fighting and the photos of the hand injury. According to Moore, Depp’s uninjured fingernail can be seen in the pictures. However, this would also have been damaged by the bottle if the projectile had hit the finger from above when the actor was resting his hand on a countertop.
Moore also noted that no broken glass was found in Depp’s mutilated finger, and no other cuts were documented around the injured area. He stated that the photographic evidence contradicted a “glass breakage” of the flying bottle. In his many years of practice, he has never seen such injuries caused in the manner described by Depp:
“This wound doesn’t really seem to come from a sharp glass crack,” says Moore in the original soundtrack. Rather, he assumes a “crush injury”.
However, when cross-examined by Depp’s legal team, he had to admit that he could not say for sure what happened to the finger. Several X-rays of Depp’s finger were shown in the courtroom, showing crushed bones.
According to Heard, Depp may have injured himself when he “smashed into pieces” a wall-mounted phone.
Depp’s attorney Camille Vasquez then tried legal spices. She argued that the surgeon never treated Depp or personally examined his hand, leaving him unable to definitively rule out that the flying vodka bottle caused his injury.
“My testimony is that I can rule out that the injury was caused by the mechanism described by Mr. Depp in his testimony,” Moore replied indignantly.