Posted on 03/14/2014 1:04:00 PM PDT by rednesss
HARFORD COUNTY, Md. (WJZ)—An 81-year-old great-grandmother is placed behind bars for a minor pet violation committed nearly a year ago. The Harford County woman says she tried paying thousands of dollars in fines but couldn’t afford them.
As Gigi Barnett explains, the senior citizen says her punishment doesn’t fit the crime.
Mary Magdalene Root’s small dogs are her constant companions. So much so that the 81-year-old widow spent two nights in the Harford County Detention Center fighting to keep them.
“I’ve never had a crime. Never. Not even a traffic ticket,” Root said.
Back in May, Root says her pets somehow got loose from her yard several times.
A neighbor took pictures of the dogs running down the street and reported her to Animal Control.
The agency slapped Root with a $7,000 fine or she could spend nearly a year in jail.
“I’m struggling to pay my house taxes. I couldn’t pay it. It’s a different thing when you leave your dogs out and you don’t care. But I do care,” Root said.
But when the cancer survivor failed to show up at court on her doctor’s orders, a judge had Root arrested.
She was booked, fingerprinted and issued a striped jumpsuit. She waited to see a judge in a cell without her cancer medication.
“I sort of clutched my Bible. And was crying and went to sleep,” Root said.
Root’s defense attorneys asked the judge to let the senior citizen go. She had no previous criminal history and she was in failing health. The judge said no. Instead, he ordered her to pay a $2,500 bail. And if she was able to pay it and get out, then no animals would be allowed back on her property.
“She gave me the works. I feel like I’m a criminal, but yet I don’t feel like I’ve done anything,” Root said.
Then on the second night, a Good Samaritan paid the bond.
“There are very nice people out there. But then there are some people who are so struck on the strictness of the law. I don’t know whether maybe that needs to be looked at,” Root said.
But now she can’t go back to her home of 44 years. Under the judge’s orders, the dogs aren’t allowed.
But Root can’t give them up.
“I love them,” she said. “I was planning on coming down on the dogs. But my dogs, they keep my company and I love them.”
Root says she’s had an outpouring of support from people in the community. In fact, there’s a petition asking lawmakers to make cases like this a little more lenient for senior citizens.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same. I can’t pull myself back,” Root said.
Root says she was taking care of her daughter’s four dogs at the time of her arrest. Now, she’s looking for good homes for the dogs.
Judge Mimi Cooper that is, not the 81 year old
About as useless??? ;-)
“She shouldn’t have pets unless she can take care of them. “
What dog owner has not had Fido or Rover get loose once or twice? Everyone I know who owns dogs has had them get loose and go off running the Boston Marathon down the road.
This is about some nosy neighbor who wanted to be an a$$ and ended up putting a sick old lady in jail.
Don't be so naive, ma'am...you have a bastard for a neighbor who was out to get you for one reason or another.
The cops and the judge didn’t have to worry about anything. This was going to be an easy arrest and conviction. Adds up, when you look at the crime statistics.
No pesky civil rights lawyers or jesse jacksons to contend with. Just an old lady. They should all be this easy.
So the cowards gave her a fine. Kinda like the “zero tolerance” crowd that has a 6 year old boy arrested for drawing a picture of a gun.
Listen up you judges: The criminal justice system is for crimes! You know, murder, rape, assault, knockout “game.” Those things that you don’t like to prosecute because the perps are just innocent victims of a racist society.
Easier to prosecute an 81 year old lady.
I just did a google search on her. Numerous accusations of corruption, speeding, driving under the influence and above all acting like every defendant is already guilty and lording over the courtroom like it’s hers personally.
Remind me never to visit Harford County, Maryland.
Let’s put the nosy neighbor in the hoosegow instead.
When you think about it, that judge was involved at a critical point in that young man's life. He could've either thrown the book at him and taken a hard line, which would've made that man's recovery from his addiction harder, or he could've encouraged him to stay clean and give him an alternative option to pay his debts.
That was a wise judge. Hope that young man stays clean and turns his life around.
So that’s what happened to Marjoe Gortner!
Agree.I think this judge may have made an impact on this young man. BTW the next fellow did nothing and got his butt thrown back in jail.
I think the fine was failure to appear in court. Not for the loose dogs.
We are reading a TV news article here. And as such it is poorly written.
Okay. AB!, never to visit Harford County, Maryland.
Wow! Very similar looking, indeed.
I think they used hot tar back in the day.....but either way, I agree and your comment was well said.
Sorry, my sexism got the best of me.
Ninnie Cooper, not Mini Cooper.
Actually, Harford County is pretty nice. A lot of it is conservative. Don’t let this judge be your example of what the people are like there.
Here is the explanation:
She is a mental health judge!!!
MIMI RAFFEL COOPER, Associate Judge, District Court of Maryland, District 9, Harford County, since November 8, 1999.
Presiding Judge, Mental Health Court Program, 2004-. Chair, Judicial Education Committee, 2002- (member, 2001-), District Court of Maryland. Member, Administrative Judges Committee, District Court of Maryland, 2002-.
Member, Mental Health, Alcoholism and Addiction Committee, 2002-05, 2006-09, 2013-, and Problem-Solving Courts Committee, 2007- (mental health oversight committee, 2007-), Maryland Judicial Conference.
Assistant State’s Attorney, Baltimore City, 1988-95. Assistant State’s Attorney, Harford County, 1995-99.
Born in Washington, DC, March 26, 1962. Attended Atholton High School, Columbia, Maryland; University of Maryland, College Park, B.A. (political science), 1984; University of Baltimore School of Law, J.D., 1987.
Law clerk to Judge Rosalyn B. Bell, Court of Special Appeals, 1987-88. Admitted to Maryland Bar, 1988. Member, Maryland State Bar Association (alternative dispute resolution section; alternative dispute resolution section council, 2003-04);
Harford County Bar Association (executive council, 2011-); Women’s Bar Association of Maryland; National Association of Women Judges. Mary Guisewhite Award, Harford County Mental Health Forum, 2004.
I agree that the fines and her being jailed for missing her court appearance seems excessive and this judge sounds like an a$$ but this evidently wasn’t a once or twice occurrence. Another article mentions that a local company donated their services to fix her fence so that rather negates the “someone left the gate open one time and my dogs got out this one time when I wasn’t looking” defense.
”Back in May, Root says her pets “somehow” got loose from her yard several times.”
And
“I’m struggling to pay my house taxes. I couldn’t pay it. It’s a different thing when you leave your dogs out and you don’t care. But I do care,” Root said….But when the cancer survivor failed to show up at court on her doctor’s orders, a judge had Root arrested."
But according to this article she had 7 dogs, including 4 that belong to her to her daughter who sounds like she might currently be “homeless”.
It also says she’s taken in strays ….evidently both of the animal and “human” variety.
Although Root said she is close to her animals and her daughter said previously her mother has taken in strays, another member of the family pleaded guilty to animal cruelty charges four years ago.
Root's great-granddaughter, Megan Dawn Wagoner, who is now 22, pleaded guilty to one count of mutilating an animal in 2010. Wagoner was living at Root's home at the time and was accused of killing a stray cat, then skinning it.
Wagoner spent two months in jail in 2011.She is currently on supervised probation and has a 17-month-old son.
Gifford said Wagoner, who is her adopted daughter and is the biological daughter of Root's grandson, did not kill the cat, but did skin it, and pleaded guilty on the recommendation of her public defender to get less jail time.
Gifford said her adopted daughter had been told by the person who killed to cat to skin it.
"She didn't think that she was going to do anything wrong, and she's trying to come forward with that," Gifford said.
While I feel a bit sorry for the poor old woman, she also does not seem to have her priorities straight; she’s struggling to pay her property taxes yet has money to care for 7 dogs? And there seems to be a lot of “blame everyone else” and some other weird goings on in that family. Not sure they sound like model neighbors. JM2C.
I think the fine was failure to appear in court. Not for the loose dogs.
She was fined $75 for each dog running loose and some fines for not having dog licenses for 4 of the dogs (I’m guessing the 4 belonging to her daughter) and in another separate and unrelated case, fined for having a dog at large, but she was jailed for failing to show up for her court appearance. I’m sorry but the “my doctor told me not to appear in court” doesn’t pass the smell test. If she was really that ill, her doctor could have called or written a letter to the judge explaining why she was too frail and sickly to appear.
And some are quick to declare her neighbor as being a jerk for reporting her, but then again we don’t know how many times the neighbor had found her dogs running amok all over his property or what other nuisances he might have put up with before he reported her.
FWIW, when my husband and I bought our first house, our next door neighbors had 5 (maybe 6 or 7, it was hard to keep count) big hound dogs. Their yard wasn’t fenced and they used to tie up the dogs with clothes line which often broke. More than once and more than just a few times I had the “Bumpus Hounds” running through my back yard, once running through our back yard cookout, knocking over the kids, jumping up on the picnic table and absconding with hamburgers and hot dogs. One time I had several nearly knock me over as I was bringing groceries from the car to the back door. Reminded me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPRdj1Ce4ao
The first time it happened, when I found the neighbors dogs in my yard, I assumed they had gotten loose by accident and being a good neighbor and an animal lover and fearing that they might run into the street and get hit by a car, I got a hold of them and walked them back to my neighbor’s house, introducing myself. And did I get a “Thank you” or even “I’m sorry”? No, the two nasty lesbian “biotches” who lived there and who owned these dogs glared at me as if I had done something wrong and without saying a word or even making eye contact with me, took their dogs back into their house.
Thankfully a year later they sold the house to a nice young couple who later after we became friends, told me how deplorable the condition of the house was, how it smelled of dog urine and how there was dog feces all over the house, how none of the female dogs were fixed and that there was blood stains on the walls and on the raggy carpet, how the lesbians (who refused to speak to the husband during the settlement) were also hoarders and how much work they had to put in to renovate the house before they could make it livable enough to even move in (but then they did get a very good price for it and it was a 200 year old house, that they restored and made absolutely beautiful).
My point is that this article makes the woman out to be a poor victim of a nasty neighbor and an unfeeling judge, but I think, just perhaps that we may not be getting the entire story.
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