For Prosecutors, Dogs' Deaths Have Become High-Profile Cases
By David Green
Originally published in The Miami Herald, July 5, 2001
As a veteran organized-crime prosecutor, Guy Singer has tackled some heavyweight criminals—killers, drug traffickers, mobsters.
Last week, the Miami-Dade assistant state attorney went after a different breed: He and colleague Michelle Roth prosecuted a Pinecrest man accused of gunning down his neighbor's dog because it barked too much.
The case wasn't a fluke. Across the country—from Miami, where two canine-killers met justice last week, to California, where a man was recently found guilty of flinging a small bichon frisé into traffic—dog-killing has become a high-profile crime.
Legal and cultural shifts are fueling the trend, experts say.
Animal rights groups have proliferated and grown more militant. Law enforcement officials now say there's a link between animal abuse and the potential to harm humans.
LEGAL CHANGE
As a result, laws have changed. In 1994, only six states treated killing a dog as a felony. That number has since grown to 33, including Florida, according to Wayne Pacelle, senior vice president of the Humane Society of the United States.
"These cases generate a lot of attention,'' said Deputy District Attorney Troy Benson of Santa Clara, Calif. "I was getting e-mails from Australia.''
Benson successfully prosecuted Andrew Burnett. The 27-year-old former telephone repairman was convicted on June 19 of grabbing Leo, a tiny bichon frisé, from a woman's car after a fender-bender and tossing the dog into traffic on a San Jose freeway.
"It was sort of a helpless kind of dog, which I think added to the outrage,'' Benson said. "That dog did not bite him, as he claimed. And even if it did, what kind of damage would that cause?''
A few of the other cases across the United States:
A Sedona, Ariz., man was sentenced in September 2000 to three months in jail and three years' probation after he killed his dog, Spike, with an ax.
Two Queens, N.Y., men were convicted in July 2000 of opening fire on a Rottweiler chained to a bush. They left the dog to die from its wounds.
A Douglas County, Colo., man was sentenced to 10 days in jail and ordered to make a donation to an animal charity in October 2000 after he shot and killed Oogie, an Australian sheepdog, with a .22-caliber rifle. The dog had wandered onto his property and had started barking at him.
Recent South Florida trials have stirred local outrage.
The case prosecuted by Singer and Roth dates to the night of Oct. 12, 2000, when someone shot Bermeo, a 154-pound Spanish mastiff belonging to Pinecrest residents Lesbia and Roberto Reyna.
The former show dog was beloved in the neighborhood—frolicking with children, licking the hands of the elderly. Its death sparked an uproar along Southwest 102nd Street.
Police eventually arrested neighbor George Rodney Timinsky. The 40-year-old building contractor allegedly confessed to business associates that he pumped three shots into the dog because it barked too much—a charge Timinsky adamantly denied.
Last week, Timinsky pleaded no contest to one count of animal cruelty before Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Roberto M. Piñeiro. He was put on two years' probation and must donate $3,000 to a local animal charity.
Singer and Roth say their effort was worth it.
"If someone tells me about a case in which a dog got killed, I'll volunteer,'' Singer said. "There's sort of a cadre of people around here who really care about animals.''
That cadre might be growing.
Twenty years ago, there were fewer than 100 animal-rights organizations, according to Boston-based activist Steven Wise, who has taught animal law at Harvard Law School and wrote Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals. Now there are more than 5,000, Wise said.
"It's gone from an infinitesimally small, very insignificant movement,'' Wise said, "to one that engages millions of people and is of great concern to millions of people.''
That growth has helped spotlight the plight of animals, Wise said. And it has put pressure on lawmakers, prosecutors and police to crack down on animal cruelty.
Hence the proliferation of states adopting tougher anti-cruelty laws within the past 10 years.
Law enforcement authorities have also taken a closer look at animal abuse.
In the late 1970s, the FBI conducted a landmark study by interviewing 36 imprisoned serial killers. Experts were searching in part for any common traits among the murderers.
Thirty-six percent of those interviewed admitted to killing or abusing animals as children, according to the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit. Forty-six percent said they had done it as adolescents.
By 1996, Sen. William Cohen of Maine was asking the Justice Department to research the issue.
"Something we believe is prominently displayed in the histories of people who are habitually violent is animal abuse,'' FBI special agent Alan Brantley said in an interview published in a Humane Society article.
"That's one of the reasons why we have put an emphasis on stronger anti-cruelty laws and more aggressive enforcement—to get such information on the record.''
There are no statistics on how many people are prosecuted each year for killing dogs. But the Animal Legal Defense Fund receives reports of more than 4,000 dog killings a year, according to animal cruelty caseworker Brad Woodall—an estimated fraction of the total number.
PUBLIC OUTRAGE
Those that come to light help fuel public outrage, experts say.
David Manuel Soto was convicted last week of killing Atlas, a Miami police dog. Soto shot the dog once in the belly as he sprinted from the scene of a botched carjacking in July 2000.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Stanford Blake sentenced Soto on Tuesday to five years in prison for killing Atlas. Blake also slapped him with a life sentence for armed carjacking and attempted murder.
During Soto's trial, nearly a dozen uniformed police officers packed the courtroom—some staring at the defendant with arms folded across their chests.
"Atlas was the first Miami police dog killed in the line of duty,'' said Assistant State Attorney Cristina Miranda.
"One judicial assistant actually broke down in tears and told me I had to win when she learned the details of how this dog died.''
