I don’t really care about semantics, but do you really expect her to be alright with someone eating her rabbit that was her property?
What’s your point.
According to the letter of the law this was property, livestock. What he did was nasty and wrong but so was the court’s decision. It does not matter what it was to her with regard to this case in criminal court.
Let us say for the sake of argument she thought the rabbit was her child; but no extension of logic can he be tried in criminal court for eating her child. She may be able to convince a jury in civil court on a preponderance of the evidence something else, but in criminal court, this is clearly a property crime. The judge and or jury were wrong. Unless he tortured it to death (the article is not very specific) killing an animal and eating it is not cruel.
The reason I care is that such precedence creates problems further down the road. My neighbor who does not like me raising rabbits for sale and slaughter can now claim I am cruel. In the not to distant future it might be termed murder. Don’t screw everyone over for the sake of punishing this one idiot how ever much he deserves to be punished.
As already noted, they deserve each other. He sought to hurt her and she sought and succeeded in hurting him with a bogus prosecution in a municipal court tried by a jury of city slickers. This never would have been a cruelty case had it occurred in central Nebraska where people know what livestock is. Finally, these two idiots are exactly the same as when they first met. Guaranteed, whatever evilness resides in him to hurt someone he once claimed he cared for and whatever vengefulness she harbors was in both of them the day they met but they were too stupid and self consumed to see the warning signs.