Sunday, June 21, 2009

Justice Thwarted By Bogus Technicality: Still Bogus

I have been following the case(s) of the thugs in Waupaca County that had chased down, tormented and killed five deer in a senseless episode of mayhem. Most recently, we learned that one of the thugs was able to have all of the felony charges dropped.

The website for the Waupaca County Post, WaupacaNOW, has more details of why the charges were dismissed (emphasis mine):

Robby Kuenzi’s defense attorney, Tom Johnson, argued in court Thursday, June 11, that the state law that defines crimes against animals cannot be interpreted to interfere with the right to hunt.

“Hunting is broadly defined according to the statute. It includes shooting, shooting at, pursuing, taking, capturing or killing or attempting to kill any wild animal,” Johnson said. “That also includes this activity.”

Johnson noted that the district attorney’s office had also filed misdemeanor charges of hunting deer out of season and hunting by illegal means.

“So the state considers what they were doing to be hunting,” Johnson said. “If they’re hunting violations, then the cruelty statutes cannot apply.”

Johnson said state law does protect the deer, but the violations would be misdemeanors, not felonies.

As my friend, lawyer/blogger Illy-T had predicted, the ADA is trying to get the case into Appellate Court and have the charges restored.

I sincerely hope he is successful.

5 comments:

  1. I just don't see how the charges can be restored. Since they were charged with hunting out of season, then how can they be charged with animal cruelty? I thinkl this was a case where the DA tried to throw as many charges against the thugs and they overcharged.
    They should have either been charged with hunting out of season or animal cruelty- not both.
    Either way, the idiots that killed the deer are sick.

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  2. "I just don't see how the charges can be restored."

    To capper's last post, you replied:

    "No matter what, it was still a bad ruling."

    So you already saw how the charges can be restored. What happened since then?

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  3. When you read the logic of the attorney's arguement and I found out more information and put more thought into it, I changed my mind.

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  4. Then you should have written that you had changed your mind in the comment above. Otherwise it "looks" like you're scrambling to avoid being viewed as a fool.

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  5. The attorney's argument depends on a statutory definition of hunting that includes for what at least one of these gents allegedly did, which in one of the five instances was running over a deer with a snowmobile and leaving it tied to a tree, which is where it choked to death.

    I think a pretty good argument could be made that such an activity is not what the legislature meant to include when it formulated the definition of hunting.

    Hunting contemplates a certain amount of pain for the animal, and possibly even a certain degree of cruelty. But what happened here seems to have exceeded some boundary.

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