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Court: You can't just run over a mother duck and get away with it
By adamg on Tue, 11/15/2011 - 6:18pm
The Massachusetts Appeals Court today reinstated a man's conviction of cruelty to animals for squashing a mother duck leading her ducklings across a mall parking lot in Dartmouth in June, 2009.
A jury found Joshua Linares guilty, but the judge then entered a finding of not guilty, arguing that even if Linares had accelerated right into the duck, the duck had stepped under the car, that the duck was "a wild animal" and that the "defendant was under no obligation to stop, even if he knew he hit the duck."
He then concluded, quoting from Commonwealth v. Turner, 145 Mass. 296, 300 (1887), that the Commonwealth did not adequately establish the defendant's "intent to commit the 'cruel and barbarous' acts proscribed by the law."
The Bristol County District Attorney's office declined to appeal, citing the costs, but a private attorney stepped in and filed an appeal with the Massachusetts Appeals Court.
The court said the judge overstepped his bounds in deciding the jury was wrong in finding the man guilty of cruelty. It cited witnesses to the death, including a woman who said she saw Linares accelerate, hit the duck and then flee and workers at the mall Macy's, who watched the mother duck try to waddle back to her babies before expiring and who then gathered both mother and babies in a box - and called police.
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Comments
Exurbanites
Typical exurb dweller.
Cruelty to animals
is usually a sign of much deeper mental problems, and the mark of sociopaths. Glad to see the asshole get what he deserves. Three cheers for the private Attorney!
He deserves much worse than
He deserves much worse than what he probably got.
He would have gotten away
He would have gotten away with it if the duck had been riding a bicycle.
and ...
if it weren't for those meddling
kidsMacy's employees!How dare they expect him to actually control his vehicle or not drive as fast as possible no matter who or what gets hurt!
And especially if..
the cyclist was wearing a video camera on his helmet!
He should have been charged
He should have been charged with poaching for taking a migratory waterfowl out of season, without a license, and without a duck stamp. The penalties probably would have been more severe, too.
So the appeals court retried
So the appeals court retried the facts of the case? I thought they didn't do that.
They reviewed whether the jury finding was proper
They had to go through the details - the judge could set aside the verdict, but that set aside had to be based on either the jury acting improperly or (like Croakley's blame-the-nanny case) the initial charges were not appropriate to the facts in evidence.
They didn't retry the facts, they reviewed them and found that the judge had acted improperly.
If only he had been drunk
and the duck had been a person, he'd have gotten clean away with it.
So, citing the classic
"limited resources" excuse, the local DA decided they weren't going to spend the time and money to appeal the judge's idiotic overturning of the jury's guilty verdict.
Now imagine if the jury found this person innocent of the charges, but the judge declared them guilty anyway. Would the state be able to use the "we don't have the time or money to hear your case" argument when the defendant filed their appeal of the judge's ruling?
Plus, there's something very scary about the fact a judge can so easily dismiss a jury's verdict.