Posted on 12/05/2008 4:22:37 AM PST by TornadoAlley3
COCOA — For nine months, Theresa Clifton has rallied with roughly 50 other protesters who attended each hearing for a woman accused of moving out of her home and leaving behind her dog to starve to death, calling for nothing but the maximum yearlong jail sentence.
On Thursday, a judge ordered Christine Abrams, 30, of Cocoa to spend eight months in jail as part of a 12-month probation sentence, after she pleaded no contest to two counts of misdemeanor animal cruelty for the starvation death of her 1-year-old German shepherd, Ella.
Judge Kelly McKibben also ordered Abrams to perform 80 hours of community service and pay a $5,000 fine, along with other court costs.
Protesters called the outcome bittersweet.
"I'm not happy with the outcome . . . but we are happy that it has been acknowledged that it was a heinous crime," said Clifton, executive director of the Central Brevard Humane Society. "It dismays me that anyone in this community would think it's OK (to starve an animal) just because it's a dog."
The case drew the attention of thousands of people worldwide who have created Web pages, signed petitions, donated money to local animal organizations and begun lobbying lawmakers for tougher animal-cruelty laws in Ella's memory.
The humane society named a dog-walking path in Ella's memory.
Emotions run high
Abrams was sentenced during an emotionally charged hearing characterized by courtroom outbursts from protesters who rallied outside the courthouse beforehand, admonishments from the judge that Abrams' attorney not direct comments at the audience, and a post-hearing battle of words in the hallway between the lawyer and a protester.
After the hearing, deputies said Abrams was escorted out the back of the building, away from protesters waiting in front with signs.
She will return to court Dec. 16 to determine when she has to report to the Brevard County jail to begin serving jail time, after her lawyer, Andrew Stine of West Palm Beach, indicated that he planned to appeal the judge's previous ruling on a motion to suppress evidence.
McKibben said Abrams may not own any animals during her probation.
"The facts of this case are very egregious," McKibben said. "I think she made a very bad decision on that date."
Abrams was arrested March 12, after prosecutors said she moved out of the home and left Ella in a cage for several months, with an unopened bag of dog food and a bottle of water mere feet away.
Police said Abrams, discovered less than a mile away at a friend's home, told them she moved out because her water had been cut off, and said she didn't take Ella with her because her new roommate allegedly didn't like dogs.
Abrams had faced a maximum of a year in jail and $5,000 fine had she been convicted at trial.
Prosecutors on Thursday asked that she be sentenced to nine months in jail as part of the probation, to 100 hours of community service, and that she be ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
'Only a misdemeanor'
In seeking a sentence that didn't include jail time, Stine drew loud protests from the courtroom gallery, when he asked that Abrams be placed on probation and house arrest, and to publish a letter of apology in the local newspaper or one of the Web sites dedicated to Ella.
He said Abrams -- who had wanted to address the court, but did not on his advice -- is remorseful and has donated the home where Ella died to Catholic Charities. He pointed out that she has no prior criminal record.
"No matter how cruel and inhumane it may appear, it's only a misdemeanor. And it's a misdemeanor for a reason. It's because this was an animal, this was a dog," he said, drawing gasps from the audience.
McKibben said she "appreciated" Abrams' showing of remorse and acceptance of responsibility, but the facts of the case warranted jail time.
There was no evidence pointing to a need for Abrams to undergo psychiatric or psychological evaluations, she said.
Sentence delayed
McKibben granted Stine's request that she delay Abrams' jail sentence until after the circuit court rules on his appeal of her ruling last month that police did not violate Abrams' Fourth Amendment rights by entering her home without a warrant.
McKibben sided with police, who said they feared Abrams might be in need of immediate medical attention after peering through a window and catching sight of Ella's decomposing body.
Stine had argued in pretrial motions that the warrantless search was illegal unless police had reason to believe they or someone inside was in immediate danger, or that evidence was about to be destroyed. Death eliminated those possibilities, he said.
Based on McKibben's decision, "today in Brevard, if an officer comes to your door and says he smells death -- which I don't even know what that is -- he could enter without a warrant," Stine said after Thursday's hearing. "I don't believe that's what our forefathers intended."
Protester concerns
Protesters said they are worried Abrams might be a flight risk, and questioned why she didn't donate her home to an animal organization and whether she actually wanted to apologize to the court.
"If she were remorseful and actually accepting guilt, she wouldn't be trying to delay this again and weasel her way out of jail time," protester Holly Gann of Merritt Island said.
We truly live in an era where perspective is lost.
BTW, the dog was a “tripod”. She only had 3 legs. Poor thing really had a rough life.
I agree with you. Dogs are great but they aren’t going to save your life when you need emergency surgery, put out your house fire or come to your aid when you need real help.
if people were more like dogs this would be a great world!
Once in Wisconsin we drove by my friends rental house (old farm) to see what shape it was in and make sure that the water pipes were empty.
Inside this old, now totally empty farmhouse was a dog in a room with wooden floors with a big block of ice in a bowl, no food and a rag to lay on, it was about 10 degrees in the house.
I didn’t know if it would survive or what damage he had suffered from the cold but after spending a lot of time overcoming it’s fear and guard instincts we got him to my friends warm farm house and he became one of the best, sweetest, good natured dogs that I ever saw.
He lived out a wonderful life on that farm as a prized companion of my friend.
That’s exactly what I was thinking.
A dog left locked up in a cage with no food or water is a HORRIBLE thing. If she'd turned the dog out on the street it would have had more of a chance than being locked up and certain to die.
I won't apologize for caring about these animals. It doesn't take away one iota from my care about humans. If nobody cared about the lesser creatures among us, then I'd surely worry about our society.
Good. Animal cruelty should be punished.
All dogs go to heaven.
All humans that abuse them go another path, one well deserved.
JMHO.
My current adopted recued pitbull was abandoned for two weeks after the family that had her moved out. She still suffers separation anxiety.
Having said that, the ones saying she could have taken the dog to the SPCA have no idea how cruel those people are. My daughter worked there until she could not stand to see the cruelty.
When she complained up the chain of command, she was told to shut up if she wanted her job.
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To be honest, a) the topic is “dog” and b) there are obviously PLENTY of people advocating for aborted as well as other children in this country.
“I love people, in general, even more than them. (But you make a compelling case how that can be harder for SPECIFIC individual humans.)”
Having read all the posts, I think some come to their conclusions exactly because it’s hard to love humans generally, when so many are just plain bad.
I mean, think about it: when you consider a huge % of people are Moslems, and half in this country are just liberal communists, how is it easy to glibly say “I love people more than animals”?
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