Animal Cruelty a Felony Again
www.bangornews.com
June 22, 2005, PRESQUE ISLE, MAINE - Worldwide outrage at the brutal slaying of a dog in early June prompted state legislators last week to approve a bill reinstating a Maine law that makes aggravated cruelty to animals a felony. On Friday, Gov. John Baldacci signed the measure into law, which makes it effective immediately.
Those charged with the Class C crime now will face a felony instead of a misdemeanor charge. Because of the recent dog killing in Presque Isle and the overwhelming response to it, officials said it was imperative to correct the law as quickly as possible.
Aggravated cruelty to animals was a felony before the summer of 2004, but a legislative drafting error listed it as a misdemeanor for a year.
The mistake received nationwide attention in recent weeks after three teen boys allegedly beat and stabbed a dog to death.
Three Presque Isle boys, ages 17, 17 and 16, allegedly entered a back yard on June 2, stole a 4-year-old female mixed breed dog and took turns impaling the animal to death.
The district attorney's office charged the teens with aggravated animal cruelty but learned from the boys' lawyers that they could not charge them with a felony because that classification had been removed and not put back in state statutes.
"What we did was look at the statute itself to make sure the offense was still there," District Attorney Neale Adams said Tuesday. "When you look up the information, you only look to make sure you're alleging the crime properly. You don't really think it is going to disappear on you."
The policy board of the Maine Criminal Justice Information System made the error while recodifying Maine statutes for consistency and accurate citation, Brian MacMaster, chairman of the system's policy board, said Tuesday. Because of the enormity of the project, MacMaster said there were bound to be mistakes.
"We can't determine where it fell through the cracks, but this certainly was not intended," he said.
The mistake meant the district attorney's office had to charge the boys with a misdemeanor, cruelty to animals.
The Legislature discovered the mistake last year and passed a bill that was signed on June 2 and slated to go into effect in September.
Rep. Jeremy Fischer, D-Presque Isle, said officials could not make the change immediate because other pieces of legislation were included in the bill, and "we didn't think we could get a two-thirds vote to make it effective immediately."
Less than 24 hours after the governor signed the bill, the Presque Isle dog was found dead along the city bike path.
People from all over the world have sent letters and faxes and made phone calls to the district attorney and governor's offices expressing outrage over the crime and demanding the teens be punished to the "fullest extent of the law."
Adams said the matter could be worse: If the individuals were adults, the most they could get for a misdemeanor is 364 days in custody.
"As juveniles, they can get a sentence as long as a period of time to their 21st birthdays," he said. "And whether it's a misdemeanor or a felony, in the juvenile system the options for a penalty are the same."
The district attorney hopes that he won't have to use the corrected law anytime soon.
"As a practical matter, these kinds of cases are exceedingly rare," Adams said. "If this was the kind of thing happening every day, then absolutely we'd want to see it fixed as quickly as possible. But I hope not to see a case like this again ever, let alone by September."
In a related matter, the area's state humane agent responded to criticism from the slain dog's owner that statements she made at a memorial service Friday for the dog were out of line.
Jennifer Howlett, state humane agent, said the dog "was made a victim by being chained up for so many years of its life," which led the owner to say she felt she was being blamed for her dog's death.
Howlett said Tuesday that her statements were misconstrued.
"I wasn't saying the dog was abused, but there were issues," she said. "This dog was made a victim - it was left outside unattended. If the dog wasn't outside, it wouldn't have been killed. It would have been somebody else's dog, no doubt, but anyone's dog left outside that night had the potential of being killed."
Howlett said she wanted people to train their dogs so they could come into the home and be part of the family.
"Had it been anybody else's dog that had been left tied out in the middle of the night, I would have said the same thing," she said.
