No jail time for Amy Winehouse

By ROWENA JOY A. SANCHEZ
January 21, 2010, 5:08pm
Amy Winehouse was told to stay on the straight and narrow road for the next two years.
Amy Winehouse was told to stay on the straight and narrow road for the next two years.

They asked if she was guilty, and she said yes, yes, yes.

Soul singer Amy Winehouse, indeed, pled guilty on Jan. 20 before the Milton Keynes Magistrates Court near London for assaulting a theater manager during a “Cinderella” pantomime show at the Milton Keynes Theatre in Buckinghamshire in December.

The 26-year-old Grammy winner turned herself in to the authorities and was booked on Dec. 23 for common assault and public order offenses. She won’t go behind bars, though; district judge Peter Crabtree decided to give her a conditional discharge instead.

“You [Amy] have now got to stay on the straight and narrow for the next two years,” he decreed.

Amy, who was charged by the name Amy Civil (her married surname), was also ordered to pay the complainant, Richard Pound, 185 pounds (equivalent to $300) for costs and compensation.

According to reports from the Associated Press and BBC News, the “Rehab” hitmaker admitted to having “grabbed and pulled” Pound's hair, reasoning that she only did so because she felt “hurt, embarrassed, and patronized."

Pound said he merely asked Winehouse to leave because she already had too much alcohol.

Earlier at the venue’s bar where Amy passed by en route to the ladies’ room, he recommended H2O instead of satiating her craving for a double vodka and Coke (take note: she had already downed five vodka-and-Cokes before the show).

Amy had caught the attention of some members of the audience prior to the incident for having been swearing loudly—an act deemed way beyond in the tradition of pantomime.

Julian Vickery, prosecution lawyer, related that someone even asked her to keep her voice down. On the second part of the show, she was asked to transfer to a private box. Although she agreed, she stood up after a short while to go to the john.

Meanwhile, Amy’s defense lawyer, Paul Morris, stressed that the beehive-haired artist has taken huge steps to alter her intoxicating lifestyle.

To which Judge Crabtree said: “You [Amy] clearly have taken effort from this report to address your alcohol problems and any other problems you may have, so you get credit for that. [But] if you commit another offense you'll be hit hard and you'll be hit twice.”

Over the years, Amy’s potentially booming career was eclipsed by headline-grabbing controversies, from her drug addiction to her rocky married life.

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