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Amy Winehouse pleads guilty to assault charges
by Samia Sehgal - January 20, 2010 - comments
Amy Winehouse has been given a two year conditional discharge and has been asked to pay £85 in costs, in addition to £100 that she must pay to Richard Pound in compensation.
London, January 20 -- Amy Winehouse can be dangerous when she’s drunk. The British singer yanked the hair of a theater manager during a Christmas pantomime this past December. This morning she pleaded guilty to common assault and public order charges at Milton Keynes Magistrates' Court.
The 26-year-old singer was charged under her married name, Amy Civil. She has been given a two year conditional discharge and has been asked to pay £85 in costs, in addition to £100 that she must pay to Richard Pound in compensation.
The singer did not speak much during the hearing.
The prosecuting lawyer Julian Vickery said that the singer was heavily drunk when she reached the Milton Keynes Theater in central England for a performance of ‘Cinderella’ on Dec. 19.
The singer was reportedly in a “positive mood” at the pantomime, where she had gone to support a close friend. At one point during the first half of the performance, Winehouse started getting loud and an audience member asked her to keep quite.
Poor manager gets assaulted
During the break they asked her to shift to a box, from her seat in the seventh row, where she was previously seated. After a while, she wanted to go to the toilet and Pound offered to show where it was.
On the way, Winehouse spotted the bar and asked for a double vodka and coke. She later admitted to have already guzzled five vodkas and coke earlier.
She was palpably drunk by then, so Pound declined the request, saying, “Don't you think you should have a glass of water?”
"Miss Civil said she felt embarrassed and patronized and, with no premeditation, grabbed his hair and pulled," said the prosecutor.
Amy’s alcohol problem
District judge Peter Crabtree said that interaction with the public is a part of Pound’s job and “if he's assaulted he deserves the court's protection.”
“In this case it's obvious that alcohol played its part,” he said.
Turning to Winehouse, who sat calmly in the dock, the judge said, “You clearly have taken effort from this (medical) report to address your alcohol problems and any other problems you may have, so you get credit for that.”
However, the star was not let off without a rough warning. “If you commit another offence you'll be hit hard and you'll be hit twice,” the judge said to her.
Winehouse is currently on conditional discharge, under which she could get re-sentenced if she fails to keep with the laws for the next two years. And that, according to the judge, was a tougher punishment than the fine “because you have now got to stay on the straight and narrow for the next two years,” he told her.