The ordeal of Mercy the Dog, doused with a flammable liquid and set ablaze, lasted 10 days in April 2006.
In these early days of Autumn 2007, prosecutors in Judge Michael Snipes' Criminal Court No. 7 wanted a jury to give Deshann Brown one year in prison for each day the dog suffered.
Instead, they gave this troubled young man four years in prison and a $5,000 fine for his third degree felony animal cruelty conviction.
Brown, 22, could have gotten 10 years in prison, which was what the animal people wanted to see, too.
The jury was out nearly two hours Friday before returning the punishment verdict around 7:14 p.m. The day before, this same jury took just an hour (and only two votes, we're told by a juror) to declare Brown guilty.
ASSESSING THINGS: So, the prosecutors won the case, the defense attorneys can take credit for not getting the full 10-year term for the guy and the jurors took a week out of their lives to listen to both sides -- they have the courthouse's most difficult job.
Of the people who had invested emotion in the trial and in the dog Mercy, there was virtually no one happy in the courtroom gallery. The animal people thought the 4-year term was too light. The relatives and acquaintances of young Mr. Brown thought it was too heavy.
In his closing argument, prosecutor David Alex suggested that the jury should give Mr. Brown the full load -- 10 years, one year in prison for each agonizing day the dog had survived before succumbing to the horrific attack.
Defense attorney Dan Wyde asked the jury to place the offender on probation under the very tough thumb of Judge Snipes. He suggested that he'd either fail that probation or, at the end of 10 years, be the "YMCA Citizen of the Year."
In the end, the jury, we're told by a panel member, picked four years just to make sure the guy would do at least two years and gave him a $5,000 fine.
THE DEFENDANT'S HISTORY: It isn't like the now-convicted felon hasn't been in trouble before. He's got a resume that includes stealing rum from a shopkeeper, committing a clumsy attempt at purse-snatching (categorized as "unarmed robbery"), a drug arrest (with his fiancé in a hotel room -- she confessed from the witness stand that she's a former drug dealer) and a pending DWI in Denton. I may have left something out. But you get the drift -- his record has more pages than a hymn book.
Probation officers in Michigan, where he was involved in the purse-snatching, may have dibs on him once Texas is finished -- all depends on how the Michigan folks work this thing out.
The testimony included showing a videotape of that DWI arrest in Denton in which Mr. Brown was placed in the back seat of a patrol with a young pal, and the two of them raised an unpleasant stink, including shouting assorted unpleasantries at the officers who were handling their arrests.
And, after he went to the Denton lockup that night, an officer testified, he was so belligerent and uncooperative that he was stored in the drunk tank -- a windowless room in which the only toilet fixture was a hole in the center of the floor.
So, the state built a solid case that Mr. Brown has been a bad actor.
Called by the defense, his "fiancé" countered that he's a good guy who loved the dog and she maintained that he wasn't the person who burned the dog. She described his arrest record as "making mistakes" and Prosecutor Terri Moore, on behalf of decent people everywhere, deftly ripped that stupid attitude to shreds.
A MOTHER'S PAIN: You have to remember that this was not a parade of model citizens stepping up to defend Mr. Brown. They almost all have posed for a jailhouse portrait.
But, his mother -- his poor, poor enabling mother -- who has been through all of these things with him, testified, too. She said what you'd expect a mom to say -- that she loves her son, doesn't believe he's the bad person he's been made out to be and believes in his ability to behave himself. She has bailed him out on several occasions.
His mom is a smallish woman, neatly dressed, attractive and an ultrasound technician.
And at the end of the trial, after the punishment had been determined, she attempted to reach the seventh floor elevators through the public lobby. But, understandably, she was approached by TV reporters trying to do their jobs -- get her reaction on tape.
But this woman was in no condition to talk.
Two young men from the "family side," serving as her escort, simply pulled the shaken woman between them and escorted her into the 7th floor stairwell.
Within seconds, you could hear her inadvertent statement. You could hear a mother wailing, the moaning of heartbreak filling the stairwell and demonstrating that a son had put his mother into an unenviable position.
It is a shame that her son was in custody elsewhere and could not hear what he has done to his mother.
Her wails will echo in the hearts of those who stood by her. She is wounded. She will suffer each time she thinks of her son, each holiday that is missed, each birthday passes, each time she hears of a prison riot. The wound in her mother's heart will be raw forever.
He is going to prison -- that most awful of places -- and this time she cannot step between him and his behavior and save him. He is a man. He is now about to be living the consequences of being a bad man.
AFTER THE TRIAL: So, the trial has ended, the weary courtroom workers -- bailiffs, court reporter, judge, prosecutors, etc. -- will move on to the next case. It will, no doubt, bring less attention than the Mercy Case has attracted.
It is, after all, a dramatic case in the Dallas history of animal cruelty prosecutions.
From now on, perhaps, investigating authorities will dot the "i's" and cross the "t's" of all animal cases -- they are felonies. Serious crimes with serious punishment that is to be taken seriously.
Four years may shrink to two years for Mr. Brown -- even so, it is still two years of wearing a number and not a name in the hellish Texas prison system where you need permission to see the sun, to look for a rainbow, to talk, to do anything that is related to freedom.
And, yet, when you consider what was done to this poor dog Mercy, you wonder, "Is four years really enough?"
WHAT CAME FROM THE CRIME: Goodness, this was an awful crime. The dog loved the man, his family testified. Yet, the man burned the dog in a fit of anger after she refused to be bred.
And once she was in the custody of a rescue group, Operation Kindness, people rallied to a dog they'd never known, a dog dreadfully injured by someone who DID know her.
How does this happen? That answer isn't in a courtroom. It is in the soul of a man.
In his closing argument, after urging the jury to not mistake revenge for justice, Mr. Wyde suggested "No one is going to remember this verdict in a month or two."
That is, perhaps, a grave underestimatio
n of the vigorous, determined staying power of the hearts of animal people.
Operation Kindness, the no-kill shelter in Carrollton that had custody of the horribly burned dog during her treatment, has made Mercy a symbol of the fight against animal cruelty. After her plight became known, the facility received letters and donations from around the world. And when she died, hundreds came to her memorial service, musicians wrote songs about the dog, people wrote poems, and genuine tears were wept.
Operation Kindness Executive Director Jonnie England, exhausted from attending every day of the week-long trial, said Friday evening that there will be a memorial service honoring Mercy in the next few weeks. Details will be announced at
www.operationk indness.org.
So, that's where it stands tonight. Reporters are filing and re-filing their stories. The prosecutors are probably analyzing what they did in the case. The defense may be doing the same. The jurors are either confident or wondering if they did the right thing. A mother of a freshly convicted felon is probably crying herself to sleep.
And Mercy the Dog lives on -- but only as a symbol. And that is the downright pity of this case.
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Just The Facts
Childhood Animal Cruelty A Common Link Among Violent Criminals
Research has shown that a strong correlation exists between substantial animal abuse in childhood and later violence to humans. Most criminals who have been violent toward people share a common history of cruelty to animals.
Here is a sample of some of the research the American Humane Association has gathered on the correlation between child abuse and animal cruelty. This data should alert researchers, prosecutors, judges, and other societal leaders to the importance of animal cruelty as a potential indicator of disturbed family relationships and future anti-social and aggressive behavior towards humans.
Research of Alan Felthous and Stephen Kellert
The research of Felthous and Kellert focused on the possible associations of childhood cruelty toward animals and aggressive behavior toward humans among criminals in adolescence and adulthood.
Felthous and Kellert studied 152 aggressive and nonaggressive criminals, most of whom came from violent homes. They discovered that the majority of criminals had shown severe, repetitive cruelty toward animals as children, and that the subjects reported 373 acts involving some degree of undue harm, violence, or cruelty toward animals.
Felthous and Kellert suggest:
Violence against pets may be an indicator of other forms of family violence.
Physical abuse of a child may result in the child abusing animals and exhibiting other aggressive behavior against people which may persist into adulthood.
A child who learns aggression against living creatures is more likely to rape, abuse, and kill other humans as an adult.
Aggression among adult criminals may be strongly correlated with a history of family abuse and childhood cruelty toward animals.
Research of Daniel S. Hellman, M.D. and Nathan Blackman, M.D.
Researchers Hellman and Blackman noted the frequent association between criminal violence in adulthood and a triad of symptoms (excessive bed-wetting, fire-setting, and animal abuse) during childhood. In a study of 84 prisoners, 75 percent of the 31 prisoners charged with aggressive crimes had the symptom triad whereas only 15 percent of the 53 involved in non-aggressive crimes had the triad or even a part of the triad.
Research of Elizabeth Deviney, Jeffrey Dickert, and Randall Lockwood
In a study of 57 families being treated by New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Service for incidents of child abuse, researchers Deviney, Dickert, and Lockwood found animal cruelty was "the sign of a deeply disturbed family."
In 88 percent of these families where physical abuse to children had occurred, animals in the home had also been abused.
In about two-thirds of those cases, it was the abusive parent who had killed or injured the animal to discipline the child.
In one-third of those cases, it was the children who were the abusers, using animals as scapegoats for their anger.
Research of Michael Robin, Robert W. ten Bensel, Quigley, and Anderson
Since many family members have close bonds to their pets, these animals can become the targets of abuse intended to hurt a person. In a study of abused children, researchers found that a high proportion of delinquent adolescents had owned pets to which they were closely attached, but which had been killed by a parent or guardian.
Their studies found:
34 percent of abused children had their special pet killed by a parent versus only 12 percent of non-delinquent youths.
20 percent of the abused children's pets had been killed intentionally versus 10 percent of non-delinquent youths.
17 percent of abused children said they had abused their animals themselves versus 10 percent of the regular population.
Other studies have shown:
Adult sexual homicide perpetrators who report being sexually abused as children reported higher rates of childhood animal cruelty (58%) than perpetrators not reporting sexual abuse (15%).
In 60 to 80 percent of families where the male hits the female, there will also be abuse of children and probably companion animals as well.
A study of 37 adult clients diagnosed with disassociation disorders noted that all of the clients reported witnessing animal mutilations or killing as part of their own childhood abuse experiences.
