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ANDERSON, S.C.––Firefighters responding to a March 20 explosion
and fire at a methamphetamine still in Anderson County, South Carolina,
found 23 pit bull terriers chained to nearby trees, along with 24 Chihuahuas
and an Akita. Burn victim John Woods was airlifted to Augusta, Georgia
for emergency care. Quilla Ralph Woods, 59, and Brenda Joyce Keaton, 51,
with charged with illegally manufacturing methadrine. Q.R. Woods “has
a 15-page criminal history dating to 1966 and is listed on the state’s
sex offender registry,” reported Charmaine Smith and Kelly Davis
of the Anderson Independent-Mail. Q.R. Woods also was charged with possession
of a firearm by a felon.
The circumstances under which the dogs were found would appear virtually
certain to bring related criminal convictions, but prosecutors have often
run into legal obstacles in pursuing charges against suspected breeders
of fighting dogs and the breeders’ spouses. The main difficulty is
in proving that the breeders and their spouses knew that the dogs were
used for criminal activity.
Different judges have twice in four months thrown out racketeering charges
filed against Luther Johnson Jr., 38, of Wetumka, Oklahoma, alleged organizer
of a dogfighting ring that police hit with a series of raids between May
and July 2004. Johnson, his girlfriend Shevetta Lee, and his brother LeShon
Johnson, 34, an ex-pro football player, allegedly owned 68 of the 225
pit bulls who were seized in the raids. LeShon Johnson is also seeking
dismissal of racketeering and conspiracy charges.
All charges against Lee were dropped in December 2004. She is now seeking
to reclaim the 50-odd pit bulls who remain in custody at the Tulsa Animal
Shelter.
Of the 30 other people arrested during the raids, about half have accepted
plea bargains, Hughes County assistant district attorney Linda Evans told
Anthony Thornton at The Oklahoman.
A Mobile County Circuit Court jury on March 18 convicted Walter Tyrone
Ware, 33, of six counts pertained to dogfighting and possession of illegal
steroids, but acquitted his wife Tanisa Latrice Ware, 31, who testified
that she knew nothing of the activities that occurred on her land and
never saw the dogs. All 23 dogs removed from the property were euthanized.
Mobile veterinarian John Symes testified that that many were severely
injured and emaciated. Six had fresh bite wounds.
Regardless of the outcome of dogfights and dogfighting cases, the dogs
are the ultimate losers, Louisiana SPCA executive director Laura Maloney
reminded the public after euthanizing 56 pit bulls on March 14 who were
seized three days earlier from reputed dogfighting ringleaders Floyd Boudreaux,
70, and his son Guy Boudreaux, 40.
Forty alleged gamecocks were seized in the same raid, which came just
over a month after 53 pit bulls were seized in the reported biggest ever
dogfighting raid in Mississippi, two months after 88 pit bulls were seized
in the reported biggest ever dogfighting raid in Texas. The SPCA of Texas
was judicially authorized to euthanize the Texas dogs at the discretion
of senior staff. Doll Stanley of In Defense of Animals’ Mississippi
Project took in the Mississippi dogs, along with nine more pit bulls who
were seized five days before the Boudreaux raid.
Both Floyd and Guy Boudreaux were charged with dogfighting, cruelty to
animals, illegal possession of a sawed-off shotgun, and illegal possession
of steroids. The accused face potential fines of $25,000 per charge plus
10 years in prison.
The Louisiana SPCA adopts out pit bulls, unlike many shelters, and Maloney
has a pet pit bull, but she judged the Boudreaux pit bulls to be too aggressive,
even those who were puppies, to take chances with.
Floyd Boudreaux sold pit bulls throughout the U.S., and to Mexico and
Japan, police said, allegedly promoting them as “a piece of history.”
The
history of pit bulls in the South is inextricably intertwined with that
of the Ku Klux Klan. Introduced to the U.S. from Britain as a waterfront
gambling activity, dogfighting spread throughout the South with the rise
of the Klan after the Civil War.
Until the 1930s the Klan in the South openly raised funds and recruited
membership through dogfights, cockfights, raccoon hunting with dogs, and
pigeon shoots. States with Klan-dominated legislatures were the last to
ban dogfighting, and among the last to ban cockfighting (still legal in
Louisiana).
White supremacist motorcycle and “skinhead” gangs reintroduced
dogfighting to the west in the 1970s and 1980s, after it had been all
but eliminated for half a century. Closely associated with methadrine
trafficking, dogfighting appears to have crossed into the Afro-American
and Hispanic inner city drug cultures and into Native American reservations
during the 1980s via prison gangs.
An allegedly racially motivated February 15 incident in Great Falls, Montana
encapsulated much of this history in microcosm. Terry Lee Wells, 19, and
Casey A. Klotz, 18, allegedly drove alongside a car driven by a 22-year-old
Afro-American they did not know, yelled racial insults at him, chased
him to his home, stoned his car, set a pit bull terrier on him, beat him,
and stole his jacket and wallet, which were found by police in Klotz’s
car. Klotz, a Caucasian woman, was charged with theft and criminal mischief.
A warrant was issued for Wells’ arrest on a charge of felony criminal
endangerment.
A Native American, Wells was already on probation for using a baseball
bat to break the arm of a man who refused to fight him in June 2002, and
was to be tried on April for criminal possession of dangerous drugs with
intent to distribute.
The association of white supremacists with the breeding of fighting dogs
was again exposed on March 14 in San Francisco, when attorneys for Marjorie
Knoller, 49, asked the California First District Court of Appeal to reverse
her involuntary manslaughter conviction for the January 2001 dog-mauling
death of neighbor Diane Whipple, 33. On the same day, the prosecution
asked the same court to reinstate a second degree murder conviction against
Knoller, set aside by trial judge James Warren before she was sentenced.
Knoller’s husband, Robert Noel, 63, was also convicted of involuntary
manslaughter, and has also appealed.
Summarized Associated Press legal affairs writer David Kravets, “Knoller
and Robert Noel were keeping a pair of Presa Canarios [a mix of pit bull
and mastiff developed for dogfighting in the Canary Islands] for a white
supremacist prison inmate when the dogs attacked Whipple.” The inmate,
reputed Aryan Brotherhood kingpin Paul Schneider, 42, is serving a life
sentence.
“Noel’s attorney claims that Noel being portrayed as a white
supremacist sympathizer prejudiced the jury. Knoller also makes that claim,”
Kravets wrote.
Both Knoller and Noel, now disbarred, were attorneys who represented Schneider
and other alleged Aryan Brother-hood members.
A disbarred attorney and two Presa Canarios, also called bull mastiffs,
were also involved on February 28, 2005, when Paul E. Meyer, 57, drew
10 days in jail from Akron Municipal Court Judge Alison McCarty, after
a year-long court battle.
In May 2003, Meyer’s two dogs mauled a neighbor’s golden retriever
in Bath Township, an Akron suburb, then bit and flattened a tire of an
investigating police officer’s cruiser. These were the eighth and
ninth reported violent incidents involving the dogs since June 2000. Convicted
on two counts of failing to restrain a dangerous dog and one count of
failing to register a dog, all misdemeanors, Meyer appealed unsuccessfully
to the Ninth District Court of Appeals and the Ohio Supreme Court.
Meyer’s license to practice law was suspended in 1997 after he admitted
having a drug abuse problem and pleaded guilty to grand theft and trafficking
in food stamps. Meyer was investigated for violating the suspension in
2000 after appearing in federal court with a man who was accused of urinating
on a park ranger’s car.
