Posted on 12/08/2004 12:45:36 PM PST by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
SKOWHEGAN -- A 26-year-old Fairfield man was sentenced to 18 months behind bars Tuesday for beating a 4-month-old wolf-hybrid puppy to death with his fists.
James Mayhew pleaded guilty to aggravated animal cruelty in Somerset County Superior Court. Superior Court Chief Justice Nancy Mills sentenced Mayhew to five years in prison with all but 18 months suspended. Mayhew will be on probation for four years after he is released.
Kennebec and Somerset County District Attorney Evert N. Fowle said Tuesday afternoon that his office treats animal cruelty cases seriously because studies show a link between abuse of animals and violence against humans.
"People who would abuse or torture innocent animals are people who would do the same (to humans) under the right circumstances," Fowle said.
It was the second time in less than a week that a prison sentence was handed down for the relatively rare felony charge of aggravated animal cruelty in Fowle's jurisdiction.
In Augusta last week, Superior Court Justice Joseph Jabar sentenced a Randolph man to four years behind bars for running over and killing his girlfriend's pregnant cat.
Jabar said the act amounted to domestic abuse because it was an attempt to control his girlfriend. One witness described the man "howling and laughing," before killing the cat.
In the Mayhew case, Fowle said there was no link to domestic violence. The Fairfield man was apparently upset because the puppy urinated in his apartment.
"He beat the dog to death because it urinated inside his residence, but the dog urinated because it was scared to death of him because of past abusive treatment," Fowle said.
Police said the puppy was beaten over a period of two months and died on July 31.
An autopsy concluded the puppy had a broken rib, a severely bruised lung and bruised muscles around the head and ears.
Police said at the time of Mayhew's arrest, a veterinarian who performed the autopsy concluded the puppy either bled to death or suffocated on its own blood.
Mayhew had no other pets or animals at his Mountain Avenue home. He apparently had seen the dog advertised for sale and bought it at eight or six weeks old.
String the SOB up and let him dangle.
You seem to think violence and cruelty against a defenseless animal is OK. Get some help.
That makes absolutely no sense. You are talking about animals that are threatening people. How was this puppy threatening the man??
He would not be serving time for a crime he "might" commit, but for one he DID.
I think you need to learn to make some distinctions between killing animals for food, or being euthanized and killing a puppy in an out-of-control, disproportinate rage.
Hey I'm only suggesting beating the kid. I never said I was going to kill him. But in order to think that beating a small child will solve my problem I must be sick. And if your sick you don't belong in prison according to the previous poster. I'm using your logic and you call me a DUmmy? Sorry your on the wrong end of this oar buddy.
The guy should have been locked up for 5 years.
That kind of sicko is destined for HUMAN murder eventually.
It needs to be nipped in the bud.
That's easy. He'll be a better person.
There are two reasons why people don't routinely beat other people to death for annoying them:
1. The internal voice known as a "conscience"
2. Fear of punishment
Given that Mayhew's actions clearly demonstrate him to be a sociopath (i.e. he has no conscience), he needs the application of a clue-by-four that will amplify his fear of punishment to the point where it will serve as an adequate substitute. Eighteen months in the joint ought to do nicely toward that end.
No one on this thread was justifying such an eventuality.
A lot of the comments on this thread do not sound like they come from anyone with the moniker of "conservative".
OK.
You all rather sound like liberals.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Put your brain on.
You first.
We kill animals every day for food.
Correct. For food - not for kicks.
The local animal shelter kills them for the hell of it to keep them off the streets.
Not "for the hell of it" but for public safety.
Farmers kill them because they threaten other animals.
Correct. To protect their livelihood, not for kicks.
Misdemeanors are all such practices should ever be prosecuted as.
That's your opinion.
All animals are only property, despite what our hearts feel like when a pet is lost.
Animals are living things, and are not therefore like inanimate pieces of property.
By the way, would you feel so bad if a dog was beat to death if it had attacked someone?
Of course not. But we're not discussing self-defense, we're discussing killing an animal just to get your jollies.
The dog is killed just the same.
This is like saying that a man who is killed by a burglar and the man who kills a burglar are morally equivalent. You clearly don't have "your brain on".
Should such an act be prosecuted as "Dogslaughter"?
No more than a man who kills a mugger threatening his life should be accused of manslaughter.
Get over it.
Sir, you are clueless. It is one thing to take an animal's life for food or out of some other necessity. It is another to enjoy killing it just for fun. Would you compare a serial killer to a soldier?
Sounds to me like you're the liberal on the thread, since you can't draw simple moral distinctions.
Someone who takes sadistic delight in the prospect of another man being subject to homosexual rape is a hell of a lot more disturbing to me than anything this guy could have done to a puppy.
Right off the bat, imprisoning this guy is an indefensible waste of around $60,000 of taxpayer money. He did not harm or threaten anyone, yet he is being punished more severely than real criminals with real victims.
In the long term, this guy is somewhat sick to begin with but he is not victimizing anyone - but after a year and a half in prison surrounded by real criminals, he will come out unemployable and hardened and there is a good chance he will have been turned into a real threat to society.
The guy should get a good ass kicking, pay a week's salary to the county animal shelter, maybe be sent to therapy for a couple weekends. A felony conviction and 18 months in prison is a travesty.
Yep, if he is a true socio/psyche he can play you like a violin with his charm while torturing cats in his basement. It is a thrill they can't and won't live without. They can never be trusted around anyone or anything helpless again. Ever. Animals, human...ever.
As do I; as do the vast majority of FReepers on this board. The assertion (however veiled) that to find this worthless psychopath's crims repugnant and worthy of punishment = not being "sufficiently" repulsed by abortion and/or abortionists is a lunatic one; a false "either/or," unsupported by anything even remotely resembling a fact.
See also: Planned Parenthood.
If he had done this to my pet prison would be the least of his problems.
I take back what I said earlier.
If stealing property worth more more than a thousand or so dollars is grand theft and therefore prosecutable as a felony, why should the destruction of animal worth just as much money not be prosecuted as a felony?
You're being ridiculously inconsistent.
What kind of monsters hurt animals? I can't imagine...
You just don't get it do you. going back to ex navy chick statment and the statement of serveral other including myself.
Life if life.... Go ask as social worker, ask a psychitrist....cruelty to animals... rats, cats, dogs, etc as a methods of controlling is a leading indication of sociopathic mind state... and it has been proven time and again with several of the serial killers that this type of activity was present in their childhood and adult life. The don't draw the definition between human life and animal life.
They kill and hurt for the sake of controlling another living creature. They don't care about the law. We have to and I don't want a psychopath such as this out on my streets.
You can take that chance in you community I won't. get over the fact that this is an issue of Animal vs. Human in the logic it is deeper then that... well at least for most of us it is. You and Asphalt seem to differ
Since your argument is based on profound ignorance (anyone with a clue knows that a person capable of such an act is ALREADY a real threat to society), I dismiss it out of hand.
My issue isn't the killing,
it is the pleasure the guy got out of the killing.
And that he did it with his bare hands, out of control etc.
Have you ever had them tell you about how good it felt to hear the bones break, the screams, the body softening under repeated assault etc? I have...and I ain't even a shrink! They just get off on retelling the story!
I clean kill, minimal suffering for the right reasons- no problem. But this guy I don't want anywhere near anyone I care about.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.