[areafiftyone]

The Inmate was more humane than the prison guard!

[cactmh]

So true. What an animal. (I wonder what the inmate was in for?)

[Behind Liberal Lines]

You know, if saw something like this in a movie like "the Shawshank Redemption" or "the Green Mile," I'd shake my head and silently mock the creators for coming up with something this over the top.

I guess I owe Stephen King, et al, an advance apology.

You have to wonder how this guard disciplines his kids at home.

[John O]

Technically he should be charged for theft of another's property. Unless of course the cats did not really belong to the inmate and ownership cannot be assigned to anyone. In which case the guard can claim them as his own and as his property he can do what he wishes with them.

In any event I think 1 year is pretty excessive. Restitution in cases of theft of this type works better.

Pretty poor way of disposing of excess property but you can't expect everyone to be good stewards.

God Save America (Please)

[lsee]

had no other recourse.

Of course he had other options...one telephone call and someone would have come to pick the cat and kittens up...he was probably trying to cover his lapse that allowed the inmate access to the cat in the first place. Destroy the evidence.

[MotleyGirl70]

I just went through this on another thread, except is was a women starving dogs to death.

Urrgggg. Even more mad now.

What gives with people wanting to hurt animals? I just don't get it.

[GB]

As a cat owner who was sickened by this story when I saw it ... this has nothing to do with prisoners' rights, it has to do with abject cruelty and a lack of common decency and humanity ... I think the best way to deal with this cretin would be to strap him down in a room and smear him with catnip, female cat essence and sardine paste and turn loose a couple dozen horny and hungry felines, preferably the variety that lives in alleys. That would be fitting justice.

[Sangamon Kid]

``so offensive and so calculated and so gratuitously cruel it diminishes the humanity of everybody.''

Give me a break! Yeah, it might have been cruel, but to send the guy up for a year when thousands of baby killers get off scott free shows the pathetic moral climate of our society.

Wake up folks! It was a litter of kittens, not someone's child.

[steve-b]

Sounds like more confirmation for G. Gordon Liddy's opinion of prison guards.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Too bad the guard didn't rape some poor 16 year old girl....he would have only recieved probabtion.

[mutchdutch]

After having just gone through an orientation for prison staff I can understand a little why this happened. You are trained to not trust the prisoners. If you let down your guard you and others might die. Not all prisoners are rational people and you would become very "hard" if you are doing your job right in prison with lifers. Many prisoners are playing games and they have a lot of time to think of games to play. Would be tough to balance this hardness with humaness.

On the other hand, some prisoners are changing. ANOTHER CASE WHERE WE ARE MISSING A LOT OF INFORMATION ON THE STORY.....but it doesn't stop us from making assumptions and comments.

I attended as a part of INNERCHANGE FREEDOM INITIATIVE (a part of chuck colsen's ministry). We are encouraged to form relationship with the prisoners but needed to understand why the guards acted the way the do.

[sockmonkey]

This reminded me of when I worked at the State Hospital here. One day when I took my patients fishing,we found a little fawn who had gotten stuck in the mud on the bank, and was very dehydrated from trying to struggle free.
We extricated the fawn, wrapped it in a blanket, and spirited it back into the ward..the patients cleaned it up, the head nurse pretended she didn't notice anything unusual, and I called a local vet who picked it up for us to try to nurse it back to health.

[Hacksaw]

The only bad thing about this is that animal life seems to be respected more thatn human life. The thug in Seattle who killed a person in the Mardi Gras celebration only got 15 years. I am a cat lover, but I would hope that we prosecute violence against humans with the same outrage.

[tcostell]

I hate cats, and I think PETA members taste just like chicken (if you cook them up right) , but the guard clearly should have behaved differently. This was pointlessly cruel. If the kittens were ill there must have been a better way to have them destroyed than that. He clearly deserves punishment.

[lavaroise]

``so offensive and so calculated and so gratuitously cruel it diminishes the humanity of everybody.''

Wait a minute. What did the guard do to encroach on his responsabilities? I don't get it. Gees, the guy may have been better off passing drugs to prisoners.

[neutrino]

The Inmate was more humane than the prison guard!

Truly. My hopes for the guard's year in prison are best not written here....

[little-e]

This is a horrible thing to do to defenseless animals....a year in prison is not enough....he should have been sentenced to having his hand stuck in the same trash compactor and see what it felt like to be crushed....

[Renatus]

I HATE cats; therefore this incident doesn't bother me at all except the jail sentence for the guy that compacted the cats. God gave man dominion over beasts, especially cats.

[conserv13]

Reading all these posts, I can't believe that there are people here that believe cruelty to animals should go unpunished.
Animals are not property, they are living beings, cats are mammals (like us) who feel pain just like we do, when they get crushed in a garbage compactor (sp?)
I might sound like a bleeding heart lib on this one, but jeez...

[ladylib]

The stupid bastard actually ordered the inmate to put the cats in the compactor. I hope he enjoys himeself in jail.

[Saundra Duffy]

My Dad made me watch as he shot a bunch of kittens and their mother - that was to show me how hard life on the farm can be. The whole lot of them were sick but it still was an awful sight and he made me watch. Maybe that's why I'm so screwed up. Ha! This story is disgusting and I'm glad the guard has to serve time.