[The owner, Bobby Loggins] straddled the pup and restrained it with one hand while using the other to repeatedly strike blows to the dog’s head. He then picked Sire up by his ears and tail and took him outside through a back door.Witnesses said (and later testified) that when Loggins eventually brought the puppy back into the house and placed it on the kitchen floor, that the brown and white pup was bleeding from the mouth and nose, shaking and unable to move.
“To me it looked like the dog was paralyzed,” [Chad] Peterson stated. “He was shaking. It looked like convulsions. He was coughing up blood.”
[...]
Guest Kollin Jones said he’d witnessed Loggins rubbing the dog’s nose into the carpet before pinning it down to inflict additional punches.
[...]
Loggins was charged with animal torture, though Iowa’s current animal cruelty/torture laws allowed no more than aggravated misdemeanor charges being filed in his case, which carried a sentence of up to just two years in prison and a $6,000 fine. On June 18, 2009, Loggins pleaded not guilty to inflicting the 30 blows to Sire’s head that caused the puppy’s death.
Loggins was found guilty by judge Gary Wenell in January who noted the "depravity and sadism" of the crime. The same judge imposed a fine of $650 and sentenced Mr. Loggins to a month in jail, with credit for time served. And this makes sense because, in the judge's words:
"The dog was his own. It was not some valuable fancy show dog belonging to another. It was not a neighbor boy's pet dog. It was an elderly person's companion. We do not have a statewide problem with this kind of a crime."Let that be a warning to you depraved and sadistic dog torturers in Sioux City - Do not beat someone else's puppy to death - only your own puppy is appropriate for punching in the head until he's dead. If you do beat someone else's puppy to death, you may have to stand before Judge Wenell and believe me, he could potentially have a vaguely disapproving look on his face and cast it in your general direction. And I don't think you want to deal with that. So remember, torture your own puppy to death and we're good.
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5 comments:
How can a human being, supposedly educated since he's a judge, speak such disgusting and insensitive words about another living creature? Just because he’s “human,” and I’ll use that term loosely, does he really place himself on a pedestal so high above all other living things? Why?
And because this poor puppy had the bad luck to become the “possession” of a crackpot rather than the accessory of a Fancy Lady, it was okay that he was tortured to death – this was okay?!
I’m shaking with rage that the judge can be so ignorant and set such precedent, and that this disgusting criminal got off with what amounts to a slap on the wrist and will probably get another poor animal to treat like dirt and kill again.
that makes me want to vomit.. and you know what else does? WHAT were those other BLOODY people doing WATCHING while this poor little creature was beaten to death?
This judge would not even fit in with the eighteenth century attitude about dogs being property. The message is clear to sickos: torturing your own dog is ok.
And I also wonder about these witnesses. Are they as psycho as the psycho?
The only thing that might possibly do any good is to get the locals good and riled about this. Send letters to the editors of all the local papers. Send op-ed pieces to all the local papers. Get local animal welfare groups to post flyers. Start a Facebook group. Contact the local bar association and see whether there's a committee that reviews the appropriateness of judge's actions - not whether they are legally correct or not, because I'm sure he had "discretion" to do what he did - but oversight for when a judge starts doing screwball things to determine whether they are fit to serve. Here in our jurisdiction, many a judge or hearing officer has been driven into retirement or not seeking reappointment because they had the bad luck to give the wrong person a break, or because they got lazy and something terrible happened, or because they put their foot in their mouth in some big dramatic way. And it's the press that does them in. They're made to look so stupid, irresponsible, insensitive, ridiculous, insert your own word here, that they have no credibility left at all. But you need to get the locals involved.
And when he gets drunk and beats his own children - his children, that aren't worth much to anyone because they aren't performing children with high academics or sports skills - that'll be ok, right? Even if he kills one because hey, they're his...
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