ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

OCTOBER 2004

Hunting dog neglect cases overshadowed by dogfighting

CHARLESTON, S.C.––Broad exemptions in humane laws for standard hunting practices have historically tended to exempt hunting packs from scrutiny.

Parallel neglect cases in North and South Carolina might now be challenging lawmakers and public officials to rethink the presumption that an investment in breeding and training ensures that dogs will be cared for––but that aspect of at least one case is overshadowed by crowded shelter conditions resulting from an unrelated case involving dogfighting.
Responding to an anonymous tip that starving dogs were eating each other, Citizens for Animal Protection of Warren County investigator William Roberts on September 10, 2004 visited the Parktown Hunting Club near Warrenton, North Carolina, and soon called for help from animal control officer James Solomon, veterinarian Chris O’Malley, and a sheriff’s detective.

Acting on the erroneous advice of Solomon and Warren magistrate W.T. Hardy that suffering dogs could be seized without a warrant, Roberts took 24 of the 60 dogs they found to his home. O’Malley took the two in the weakest condition to his clinic.

Eighteen days of confusion followed over the warrant requirements, whose dogs were involved, and who was responsible for looking after them. Dogs were found to be registered to six different individuals, one of whom said he was not a member of the Parktown Hunting Club and that the dog traced to him had apparently been stolen from the club he does belong to, 60 miles away. Citizens for Animal Protection of Warren County eventually named eight “John Does” in a civil suit, and won temporary custody of the dogs pending an October 12 hearing.

On September 14, Charleston County Animal Services and sheriff’s deputies impounded 21 reportedly emaciated hounds from a site on Johns Island, South Carolina. The dogs were taken to the John Ancrum SPCA for care.

Herbert Murray Jr., 60, admitted to owning 17 of the dogs and was charged with 17 counts of cruelty. Legal responsibility for the other four dogs was not determined. Two puppies were euthanized due to poor prospects for recovery.

The John Ancrum SPCA was already overextended in looking after 50 pit bull terriers seized on April 7 from alleged dogfighter David Tant, 57, who was arrested after a surveyor stumbled into a trip-wire on his property and was wounded by a shotgun blast. Tant faces 68 criminal charges, including animal fighting, assault and battery with intent to kill.

“A very unfortunate and sad part of this is that the John Ancrum SPCA is having to euthanize adoptable dogs in order to keep these 50 dogs who will never be able to be introduced back into society,” Charleston County administrator Roland Windham told Charleston Post & Courier staff writer Robert Behre. John Ancrum SPCA spokesperson Charles Karesh estimated that keeping the Tant pit bulls, as required by the court, has cost 25 other dogs’ lives.

The pit bulls would disappear fast if offered to the public. A growing problem in regions with heavy dogfighting activity is that reclaim and adoption fees at shelters are often less than the going price of a stolen “bait dog” used to train fighting dogs, and much less than the price of a proven fighter or bitch known to whelp “game” fighters.

“So many people have showed up at the parish shelter in Luling (Louisiana) and demanded dogs they don’t own,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune noted in a September 14 editorial, “that the St. Charles Parish Council passed an ordinance that requires owners of pit bulls and wolf hybrids to tag the animals with a microchip to prove identification....The Sheriff’s Office also could work to crack down on the illegal dogfights that are thought to be driving the market for pit bulls,” the Times-Picayune suggested.

That would help––but as dogfighting investigators often point out, laws need to be updated to treat the crime seriously. That includes incarcerating trainers, handlers, promoters, and gamblers, who are typically also involved in other forms of crime and may kill an informant as readily as a dog.

10-year sentence

A trend toward stiffer sentencing may have begun in Dallas, Texas, on September 1 when a jury of eight men and four women sent Carey D. McMillian, 23, to prison for 10 years on a first conviction for cruelty and dogfighting.

McMillian in September 2003 set two pit bull terriers on neighbor Ronald Huff’s Dalmatian/pointer/hound mix, named Cisco, after stealing Cisco from Huff’s yard. Other neighbors videotaped McMillian watching from a lawn chair as the pit bulls fatally mauled Cisco. McMillian reportedly gave Cisco a kick to make sure he was dead before dragging the presumed carcass into an alley behind Huff’s home––but Cisco was still alive when found, hours later.

The case, and sentence, reminded observers of the April 1990 conviction of Kevin Deschenes, 19, in Lowell, Massachusetts, whom a neighbor photographed in the act of stomping his German shepherd. Sent to jail for six months, Deschenes was the first person in Massachusetts and perhaps the U.S. to actually serve time for cruelty in more than 20 years.

That finding, together with increasing recognition of the association of unpunished violence toward animals with later violence toward humans, led to the passage of laws providing felony cruelty penalties in more than 40 states.
By 1996, ANIMAL PEOPLE discovered in a review of sentencing patterns, the typical sentence for violent abuse of a dog or cat included six times more days in custody or on probation than seven years earlier. ANIMAL PEOPLE affirmed that the trend was continuing in a 1998 follow-up.

Hog/dog conviction

“Hog/dog rodeo” promoter Johnnie Hayes of Coffeyville, Alabama, pledged to appeal his September 8, 2004 cruelty conviction in Clarke County District Court. Sentencing was deferred.

Hayes was convicted for entertaining crowds with competitions in which pit bull terriers were set upon penned pigs. The “winner” is the dog who pulls a pig to the ground by the ear fastest.

Hayes, owner of H&H Kennels in Coffeyville, was arrested in February 2004 after an investigative report about hog/dogging by Mike Rush of NBC-12 in Mobile. Coffeyville police chief Frankie Crawford and Clarke County Democrat editor Jim Cox described at least three years of efforts to get Clarke County district attorney Bobby Keahey and sheriff Jack Day to move against Hayes. Keahey and Day blamed each other.

Hog/dog promoter Charles “Chuck” Harris Jr., of Clinton, Louisiana, meanwhile told Mary Foster of Associated Press that he will go out of business rather than challenge a new state law banning the events. The law took effect on August 15.