CANBERRA, Australia — Australian prosecutors dropped a possible prison case in opposition to American actor Amber Heard over allegations that she lied to a court docket about how her Yorkshire terriers Pistol and Boo got here to be smuggled into Australia eight years in the past, the federal government mentioned Wednesday.
Heard and her then-husband Johnny Depp turned embroiled in a high-profile biosecurity controversy in 2015 when she introduced her pets to Australia’s Gold Coast, the place Depp was filming the fifth film within the “Pirates of the Caribbean” collection.
Australia’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, a biosecurity watchdog, mentioned the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions determined in opposition to prosecuting 37-year-old Heard for allegedly feigning ignorance concerning the nation’s strict quarantine rules.
“Prosecution action will not be taken against … Heard over allegations related to her sentencing for the illegal import of two dogs,” the division mentioned in a press release.
The division had investigated discrepancies between what her lawyer advised an Australian court docket in 2016 – when she admitted smuggling the canine – and testimony given in a London court docket in 2020 when Depp, now 60, was suing The Sun newspaper for libel over allegations of home violence in opposition to his former spouse.
Heard had pleaded responsible in 2016 on the Southport Magistrates Court in Australia to offering a false immigration doc when the couple introduced their canine into Australia in a chartered jet a 12 months earlier.
Prosecutors dropped extra severe prices that Heard illegally imported the canine – a possible 10-year jail sentence.
The false documentation cost carried a most penalty of a 12 months in jail and a nice of greater than 10,000 Australian {dollars} ($7,650). Magistrate Bernadette Callaghan sentenced Heard as an alternative to a one-month good habits bond, underneath which she would solely should pay a nice of AU$1,000 if she dedicated any offense in Australia over the subsequent month.
Heard’s lawyer, Jeremy Kirk, advised the court docket that his shopper by no means meant to lie on her incoming passenger card by failing to declare she had animals along with her. In fact, Kirk mentioned, she was merely jetlagged and assumed her assistants had sorted out the paperwork.
But a former Depp worker, Kevin Murphy, advised London’s High Court in 2020 that Heard had been repeatedly warned she was not permitted to carry canine to Australia. But she insisted, and later pressured a employees member to take the blame for breaking quarantine legal guidelines.
The division advised the AP it collaborated with abroad businesses to research whether or not Heard had supplied false testimony about her information of Australia’s biosecurity legal guidelines and whether or not an worker had falsified a statutory declaration underneath duress of dropping their job.
The division had supplied prosecutors with a short of proof in opposition to Heard, however no prices can be laid.
When the canine have been found in May 2015 following a visit from the couple’s rented Gold Coast mansion to a canine grooming enterprise, Depp and Heard complied with a government-imposed 50-hour deadline to fly them again to the United States or have them euthanized.
Pistol and Boo turned Heard’s property when the couple divorced in 2017.
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