Update: Amber Heard has been given a $1000 one year good behavior bond with no conviction recorded as the case concluded this afternoon.
Big news for Amber Heard and Johnny Depp as the end of the ongoing DogGate scandal is nigh, the magistrate revealing the matter will be resolved today “to let people get on with their lives” The Brisbane Times reports.
This follows the news earlier this morning that Heard would plead guilty to the lesser charge of falsifying quarantine documents after two charges of illegal importation of an animal, relating to her bringing her and Depp’s dogs Pistol and Boo into the country illegally last year, were dropped before the trial began.
Adjourning the trial until 2:30pm, the magistrate’s comments and Heard’s guilty plea suggest that the young star will be charged and sentenced later today. This follows a colourful day in court, during which Heard’s defense team argued that the star never intended to provide false information, assuming the dog’s travel forms had been handled by Depp’s staff.
“This is usually handed over to Johnny’s staff, along with my passport and visa,” she said.
“She positively believed the relevant documentation had been provided to the relevant authorities,” her lawyer Jeremy Kirk confirmed.
Arguing that the paperwork had “slipped through the cracks” and that Heard merely made a mistake in filling out the forms incorrectly, Kirk called it “a terrible, terrible mistake”, making clear “there was no attempt to deceive”.
Heard and Depp also made a short video apology to be played to the court, Heard expressing remorse over the mistake and the couple going on to discuss the importance of Australia’s biosecurity. Depp even included a little warning to any other would-be dog smugglers.
“Australians are unique… warm and direct,” he said. “When you break their laws they will tell you.”
What was most surprising though was that Deputy PM and initial instigator of this whole debacle Barnaby Joyce was nowhere to be seen. Full of vitriol when he last year suggested it was time the dogs “buggered off back to the United States” or else be put down, the former Minister for Agriculture seems to have cooled his temper in the intervening months.
Maybe he caught Heard throwing shade at him and couldn’t face her in person?
