MULLUMBIMBY, Australia (AP) — Australian actor and director Simon Baker, best known for his role as Patrick Jane in the CBS drama series “The Mentalist,” avoided a conviction Wednesday after pleading guilty to a charge of driving under the influence of alcohol near his rural home.
The 55-year-old appeared in the Mullumbimby Local Court in New South Wales state for sentencing after pleading guilty the week before to a charge of driving with a blood-alcohol concentration exceeding the legal limit of 0.05%.
Baker acted alongside Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway in the Oscar-nominated 2006 film “The Devil Wears Prada" before starring as a former professional psychic who became a California Bureau of Investigation consultant in the hit series “The Mentalist” for eight seasons until 2015. He has worked on multiple shows and movies since, including a movie adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's “ Klara and the Sun ” directed by Taika Waititi with an expected 2025 release.
Magistrate Kathy Crittenden accepted that Baker was remorseful and was unlikely to drive after drinking again. She released him on a nine-month good behavior bond with no conviction recorded. Australian judges have discretion to not record a conviction against first-time offenders under exceptional circumstances.
Police reported seeing Baker's Tesla electric car driving erratically in the fashionable Byron Bay region where he lives at 2:11 a.m. July 20.
That was hours after a faulty software update issued by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike created worldwide technological havoc, disrupting airlines, hospitals, government offices and financial systems. Crittenden said the outage knocked police systems offline and an electronic breath test could not be completed on Baker.
She said police resorted to an “old-fashioned sobriety test.”
Police reported Baker was unsteady on his feet and smelled of alcohol. He told police he had consumed four glasses of wine over dinner since 6 p.m., roughly eight hours prior. He was alone in the car.
Baker was “very polite and cooperative” and “extremely remorseful for his actions,” Crittenden said. Baker had since completed a traffic offenders’ rehabilitation program, the court was told.
Crittenden said four character references were tendered to the court about Baker’s community contributions, significant remorse and attesting to his conduct being out of character.
“The court has little difficulty in finding that Mr. Baker is remorseful for his offending and it is unlikely he will offend again,” she said.
Australian actor and director Simon Baker, center, best known for his role as Patrick Jane in the CBS drama series The Mentalist, arrives at the Mullumbimby Court House, Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2024, for his sentencing hearing for driving under the influence of alcohol near his rural home. (Darren England/AAP Image via AP)
BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen is expected to unveil the members of her new team for the next five-year tenure at the head of the bloc on Tuesday.
But it has been a tumultuous ride to get it ready for office — the search for the 26 members of her college was chaotic and scandal-ridden even before the parliament is to start hearings on whether to accept each proposed candidate.
French heavyweight Thierry Breton resigned and openly criticized von der Leyen for allegedly “questionable governance” on Monday and accused her of backroom machinations to oust him.
Many saw his shock resignation more as a removal by von der Leyen of one of her most open internal critics after exerting pressure on French authorities.
Compounding such problems was the defiance of many of the 27 member states as von der Leyen struggled to get anywhere close to gender parity on her Commission team — they staunchly refused to give her a choice between a male and a female candidate.
After days of secret talks with individual European governments about their picks, von der Leyen huddled with the leaders of the political groups at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, to discuss the makeup of her college.
Her full announcement was expected later Tuesday.
Even if the Commission's makeup has hardly become the talk of bar rooms or barber shops across the vast EU of 450 million people, it has enthralled the upper echelons of politics and bureaucracy, as they sought to boost one candidate or undermine another.
The Commission proposes legislation for the EU’s 27 member countries and ensures that the rules governing the world’s biggest trading bloc are respected. It’s made up of a College of Commissioners with a range of portfolios similar to those of government ministers, including agriculture, economic, competition, security and migration policy.
The Commission is to start work on Nov. 1, but speculation is rife that it might not get down to business before January.
A former German defense minister, von der Leyen has been pressing smaller countries to change their minds. In recent weeks, a man who was the preferred candidate of the government in Slovenia withdrew and a woman was proposed in his place.
She decides which country gets which portfolio, and some of them, like those involving trade or finance or EU enlargement, are coveted by certain countries. Plum jobs like the post of vice president — the commission has seven of these — are also much sought after.
FILE - European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, second right, speaks with from left, European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders, European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton and European Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement Oliver Varhelyi during a meeting of the College of Commissioners at EU headquarters in Brussels, on June 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert, File)
