Crown Asks for Harsher Sentence for Man Convicted in Cat Mutilation
by Stephanie Levitz
Originally published by The Canadian Press, May 28, 2003
TORONTO — An art student convicted of animal cruelty for stabbing, strangling and skinning a cat to death should be in jail full time, not just on weekends, a Crown lawyer argued Wednesday in court.
Calling the trial judge's original decision a "fundamental misconception," lawyer Jamie Klukach told the Ontario Court of Appeal that the sentence of 18 months house arrest and 90 days in custody on weekends given to Jamie Power, 22, was too lenient. "If this does not qualify as the worst kind of cruelty to animals, it is difficult to conceive what might," Klukach told the court.
Power and Anthony Wennekers, 25, pleaded guilty to mischief and animal cruelty for participating in the May 2001 torture and killing of a cat. They were convicted and sentenced in April 2002.
Power, a one-time vegetarian, argued the cat was skinned on video as part of an art project showing it was hypocritical for society to allow the killing of some animals for meat.
The Crown wants Power to serve the last month of his sentence in full-time custody but also asked the court to consider increasing the sentence to 10 months of incarceration. Wennekers has already served his sentence of 22-months.
Power's lawyer, Mark Sandler, argued that his client has served almost all of his time and has possibly served 80 days more than his original sentence due to a parole officer's error.
"If anything, that exceeds the existing jurisprudence and appropriate tariff on cruelty to animals," Sandler told the Judge.
The three-member panel of judges reserved decision on the appeal of Power's sentence.
The judges queried the lawyers for both sides on Power's motive and the nature of the charges.
On top of animal cruelty, Power was convicted of criminal mischief because the offence was considered a crime against someone else's property. The cat, nicknamed Kensington by animal rights activists, did not belong to Power. Levying the charge allowed the Crown to ask for more jail time than a conviction under cruelty to animals alone would allow.
"If not faced with six months maximum on animal cruelty, we wouldn't be talking about a mischief charge," said Judge David Doherty. "This is a case about terrible cruelty to an animal and nothing else."
Including the criminal mischief charge, said Doherty, suggests that it is a greater crime to torture someone else's cat than one's own.
Sandler argued there was a distinction between killing a cat for pleasure and for an artistic message, Power's original defence. The trial judge found that Power and his associates could not have set out to torture the cat because the attack only took five minutes. In the judge's opinion, a deliberate act of torture would be longer.
Judge Richard Armstrong faulted the trial judge for not being able to find a motive behind Power's actions.
"He must have had some kind of really strange idea of what he was doing," said Armstrong. "You can't attach a social value to it."
Klukach argued in court that regardless of Power's intention, he did not try to stop or hasten the animal's death and was clearly in charge of the proceedings, not expressing any remorse until much later.
As the lawyers made their arguments, a group of animal rights activists gathered outside the court to call for tougher penalties for animal cruelty and to support Bill C-10, an update to Canada's animal cruelty laws currently before the Senate.
"I thought when this case came out something would finally happen with the law," said Suzanne Lahaie, director of the Freedom for Animals group. "Two years later, the laws aren't passed. What more do they want to see?"
Leslie Bisgould, an animal rights lawyer who has been following the case closely, said rights that protect animals should reflect that they are living creatures not property.
"It is not a thing, it is a living creature," she said. "Why don't we have laws that reflect that sentiment instead of old-fashioned laws that say animals are things, use them however you want."
The sentencing of Power and Wennekers followed a trial in which a gruesome videotape of the men's crimes was played to the courtroom, bringing spectators to tears.
A third man seen in the videotape, Matthew Kaczorowski, was arrested in Vancouver and returned to Toronto. He will be sentenced after the appeal court makes its decision.
