Australian prosecutors have dropped a potential criminal case against American actress Amber Heard over allegations that she lied in court about how she smuggled her Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, into Australia eight years ago, the government announced on Wednesday.

Heard and her ex-husband Johnny Depp became embroiled in a high-profile biosecurity controversy in 2015 when she brought her pets to the Gold Coast in Australia, where Depp was filming the fifth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean series.

The Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, which oversees biosecurity, said the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to prosecute 37-year-old Heard for allegedly pretending ignorance about the country's strict quarantine regulations.

The department said in a statement, “No legal action will be taken against Heard regarding allegations related to her being charged with illegally importing two dogs.”

The department investigated contradictions between what her lawyer said in an Australian court in 2016, when she admitted to smuggling the dogs, and the testimony given in a London court in 2020 when Depp, now 60, was suing The Sun newspaper in the UK for defamation over allegations of domestic violence against his ex-wife.

Heard pleaded guilty in 2016 in a Southport court in Australia for providing a false immigration document when the couple brought their dogs to Australia on a chartered plane the year before. Prosecutors dropped more serious charges that Heard imported the dogs illegally, which could lead to a 10-year prison sentence.

The dog disaster seemingly ended with an apology video in which Depp and Heard sat with stony faces in front of the camera and delivered scripted lines about the importance of protecting biodiversity in Australia.
Heard said in the video, "Australia is a wonderful island, with a treasure of unique plants and animals and humans, I am truly sorry for not declaring my dogs, protecting Australia is important.”

But Kevin Murphy, a former employee of Depp, told the High Court in London in 2020 that Heard had received repeated warnings that she was not allowed to bring the dogs to Australia, but she insisted, later pressuring one staff member to take the blame for breaching quarantine laws.

The Australian Department of Agriculture then opened an investigation into perjury.

The charge of providing a false document in the original case carries a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a fine of more than 10,000 Australian dollars (8,700 Canadian dollars), and Judge Bernadette Callaghan instead placed Heard on a one-month good behavior bond, under which she only has to pay a fine of 1,000 dollars (870 Canadian dollars) if she commits any crime in Australia during the next month.

Jeremy Kirk, Heard's lawyer, told the court that his client never intended to lie on her incoming passenger card by failing to declare that she had animals with her; in fact, Kirk said she was simply suffering from travel fatigue and assumed her assistants had arranged the paperwork.

When the dogs were discovered in May 2015 after a flight from the couple's rented mansion in Gold Coast to a dog grooming company, Depp and Heard complied with the government's 50-hour ultimatum to either return them to the United States or euthanize them.

Pistol and Boo went with Heard when the couple separated in 2017.

A British judge ruled against Depp in the Sun defamation case, but in a high-profile case in Virginia, he won a defamation lawsuit against Heard over an article published in The Washington Post. The same American jury found that Heard was defamed by one of Depp's lawyers.