New Animal Cruelty Task Force being formed in CT UPDATE on today's hearing

[moosmom]

This comes in the wake of the guy who pumped nails into his pitbull's head after it bit his son (wonder what his son did to provoke it???)

All I can say is...IT'S ABOUT TIME!!!! They also found cock fighting ring when they raided a home for drugs.

The Legislative members will bring it up today and vote on it.

FINALLY!! Someone is speaking out for the animals.

[moosmom]

The guy who pumped nails into his pitbulls head was denied AR (Accelerated Rehabilitation). Come to find out, the guy was an ILLEGAL ALIEN working at a pizza parlor. The first thing he did when they took his son to the hospital was he drove home and pumped the nails into the poor dogs head. The prosecuting attorney bumped the charges from a misdemeanor to a Class D felony.

They got a continuance and his next court date is May 22. You can be darn sure I'll be there.

Here's the article from the Hartford Courant:

BRISTOL - The man accused of savagely killing a pet pit bull by drilling holes into her head may never go to trial for the attack, a judge said Wednesday.

Instead, Severino Cruz is likely to be deported.

During a lengthy hearing, Judge Joseph Doherty said the animal abuse allegations against Cruz "shock the conscience," and refused Cruz's request for a special form of probation. Doherty continued the case until May 22, but acknowledged that that session probably won't accomplish much.

"It may very well be that Mr. Cruz will not be in court that day," prosecutor Stephen Preleski said in court. "He probably will be in federal custody at that time."

After the hearing, judicial marshals led Cruz out of the courtroom and planned to transfer him to a federal detention facility in Hartford. Cruz's attorney, Deron Freeman. said his client probably will be deported to Mexico in the next two weeks or so.

Cruz's case has drawn widespread publicity, leading hundreds of animal rights activists and others to write letters imploring Doherty to send Cruz to prison. About 30 activists with banners and placards protested outside Superior Court before the hearing, with many of them chanting "Abuse an animal, go to jail."

Cruz, 32, is accused of killing the dog after the animal bit his son in the basement of a Plainville duplex where the Cruzes were living with extended family. He has been free on bond since his arrest in January. But Cruz turned out to be living in the country illegally, and Freeman said it appears that he will be deported sometime this month. That would leave the animal abuse case hanging over his head if he ever returned to the United States, Freeman said.

In court, Freeman asked the judge to grant Cruz accelerated rehabilitation, which would have disposed of the case and left his record clear so long as he did not get into any new legal trouble in the following year. Freeman said his client is a hard-working, law-abiding family man who had acted in a moment of rage after learning that the dog, named Baby, had bitten his 9-year-old son.

"He's remorseful. I know there are reports that he's not, but those reports are untrue," Freeman told Doherty.

Preleski said the attack on the dog was too severe to allow for accelerated rehabilitation, and questioned Freeman's claim that Cruz was law-abiding.

"He's here illegally, he's been deported once already," Preleski said.

It's unclear how long Cruz lived in the country illegally, but Freeman said he had worked at the same job at a pizza restaurant for four years.

Freeman said that Cruz's family had nothing to do with the attack. He said Cruz's wife and children have received hate mail since the arrest, and he emphasized that with Cruz scheduled to be deported, letters from animal rights activists won't reach him in Plainville any longer.

[Medusa]

He's remorseful. Uh huh. Anyone who would do something that vile is, IMO, incapable of remorse. He won't get what he deserves. They never do. It's always the animals that suffer. Always. And they pay and pay and pay for our courts' mistakes and leniency.