CANBERRA, Australia — Australian prosecutors dropped a possible felony case towards American actor Amber Heard over allegations that she lied to a courtroom 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 Division of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, a biosecurity watchdog, mentioned the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions determined towards prosecuting 37-year-old Heard for allegedly feigning ignorance concerning the nation’s strict quarantine rules.
“Prosecution motion is not going to be taken towards … Heard over allegations associated to her sentencing for the unlawful import of two canine,” the division mentioned in an announcement.
The division had investigated discrepancies between what her lawyer informed an Australian courtroom in 2016 — when she admitted smuggling the canine — and testimony given in a London courtroom in 2020 when Depp, now 60, was suing The Solar newspaper for libel over allegations of home violence towards his former spouse.
Heard had pleaded responsible in 2016 on the Southport Magistrates Court docket in Australia to offering a false immigration doc when the couple introduced their canine into Australia in a chartered jet a yr earlier.
Prosecutors dropped extra critical fees that Heard illegally imported the canine — a possible 10-year jail sentence.
The false documentation cost carried a most penalty of a yr in jail and a high quality of greater than 10,000 Australian {dollars} ($7,650). Justice of the Peace Bernadette Callaghan sentenced Heard as an alternative to a one-month good habits bond, below which she would solely must pay a high quality of AU$1,000 if she dedicated any offense in Australia over the following month.
Heard’s lawyer, Jeremy Kirk, informed the courtroom that his consumer by no means meant to lie on her incoming passenger card by failing to declare she had animals together with her. In fact, Kirk mentioned, she was merely jetlagged and assumed her assistants had sorted out the paperwork.
However a former Depp worker, Kevin Murphy, informed London’s Excessive Court docket in 2020 that Heard had been repeatedly warned she was not permitted to carry canine to Australia. However she insisted, and later pressured a employees member to take the blame for breaking quarantine legal guidelines.
The division informed the AP it collaborated with abroad companies to research whether or not Heard had offered false testimony about her data of Australia’s biosecurity legal guidelines and whether or not an worker had falsified a statutory declaration below duress of shedding their job.
The division had offered prosecutors with a short of proof towards Heard, however no fees can be laid.
When the canine had been found in Could 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 america or have them euthanized.
Pistol and Boo turned Heard’s property when the couple divorced in 2017.