Dear editor:
The outcome of the recent Cheyenne animal hoarding case highlights a failure in state law that the Wyoming Coalition for Animal Protection (WYCAP) sees recurrently.
The incident involved the confiscation of 101 neglected animals and the discovery of 22 dead animals on the owner's property.
The current plea deal means the person responsible pleaded guilty to just four misdemeanors.
As Britney Tennant, director of the Cheyenne Animal Shelter, made clear in the article, there is problem with Wyoming’s animal cruelty laws as currently written.
The felony cruelty statute (WY Stat § 6-3-1005) states that felony cruelty occurs when a person “knowingly, and with intent to cause death or undue suffering, beats with cruelty, tortures, torments, or mutilates an animal.”
The problematic phrase is “with intent,” because intent is so hard to prove.
This may explain why the Laramie County attorney’s office dropped the original charges of 22 felony counts of animal cruelty, for the 22 animals found dead.
WYCAP volunteers regularly see county and municipal attorneys pursue misdemeanor rather than felony charges in egregious incidents of animal abuse.
The person involved in the Cheyenne incident was a serial offender with at least 33 prior citations for animal-related offenses. Yet the law proved ineffective in stopping him until the discovery of dead and neglected animals in October last year.
The difficulty in meeting the Wyoming criterion for felony cruelty is compounded by a reluctance in many sheriffs’ departments to promptly address reports of serious animal abuse.
In a recent horse hoarding case in Goshen County, also reported in Cowboy State Daily, local authorities were reluctant to intervene until one or more horses were either dead or at death’s door.
Proving felony cruelty should not require a body count.
The answer is to update Wyoming cruelty statutes.
It would be a big improvement if the legislature removed the current requirement to know what goes on inside the mind of an animal abuser to establish felony cruelty.
Other reforms worth considering are:
1) authorize courts to order psychological evaluations and treatment for persons convicted of animal cruelty;
2) empower courts to permanently bar convicted abusers from owning animals in Wyoming;
3) grant veterinarians civil immunity when they make good-faith reports of suspected animal cruelty;
4) 1) define animals as sentient beings rather than mere “property."
Sincerely –
Dr. Donal O’Toole
Wyoming Coalition for Animal Protection (WYCAP)
