The Law is Finally Catching Up to Shia LaBeouf

Lock your doors and put away the good china: Shia LaBeouf is back on the streets. The actor and accused abuser led a brief reign of terror over New Orleans at the beginning of the year, wherein he was arrested after getting into a fight in a bar.

This week, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanour battery charges and received a sentence of two years’ probation, rehabilitation for alcohol abuse, sensitivity training and anger management classes. He will be required to spend six months in New Orleans’s jail if he fails to complete his probation successfully, according to The Guardian. LaBeouf’s lawyer, who is presumably not paid enough to put up with all of this, said that the actor was now “looking forward to focusing on family, work and new creative projects.”

She also denied that LaBeouf’s attack was driven by anti-gay “bias”, even though we have video of him saying homophobic slurs at the victim. He was also arrested in 2014 over allegations that he disrupted a Broadway show and called a police officer the F slur. We also have that weird interview he gave where he fully admitted to being 100% homophobic. Like, he said that out loud and stood by it.

LaBeouf and Mia Goth split up last year. He’s still, inexplicably, working as an actor despite his dangerous anger issues and professional erraticism. According to IMDb, he has three upcoming movies, one of which has this synopsis: “A Jewish pathologist is forced to assist Josef Mengele with medical experiments at Auschwitz concentration camp during WWII.” Being a homophobic bully with accusations of domestic violence to your name has, alas, never stopped Mel Gibson, a friend of Shia’s, from having a successful career. It’s not like he’s a woman who asked people to be less rude or something.

Everything about the LaBeouf case is aggravating and depressing. He clearly needs help but won’t get it, and there are still enough directors willing to put their cast and crew in potential harm’s way to hire him. One worries that a story like this will only ever have a bad ending for everyone involved.