Sing Sing guard gets year in jail for killing 5 kittens

News Radio 88 ^ | 3/22/02

[areafiftyone]

White Plains, New York-AP) -- A former prison guard who killed five kittens in a trash compactor at Sing Sing has been sentenced to a year in jail. A judge said the crime was ``so offensive and so calculated and so gratuitously cruel it diminishes the humanity of everybody.''

Forty-eight-year-old Ronald Hunlock had been convicted of aggravated cruelty to animals. Last March he found an inmate with contraband at the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining. He then searched the inmate's cell, found five newborn kittens and their mother and told the inmate to put them in the compactor. The inmate refused, so Hunlock did it himself.

The mother cat escaped but the kittens were crushed. Defense attorney Daniel Gallivan had asked the judge not to impose jail time, and said Hunlock thought the cats were ill and had no other recourse.

[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.

[Sangamon Kid]

Geez, aren't you the same guy who said it was cruel baby killing to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg, a creature lacking the brain, heart, and nerve-endings of a kitten? If that act is cruelty, this certainly is.

Not sure if you're specifically accusing me of having said that or not, or just making a general statement. You'll have to clear that one up.

Is the use of the word "creature" a Freudian slip? I think it reveals what you might really think about the abortion issue.

[Sangamon Kid]

You wake up! Reread my original post. I never said it wasn't a case of cruelty.

[Dimensio]

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

Are you standing in for Tabitha Soren?

[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.

[jerrymdss]

Just becuase justice is not done elsewhere does not mean it should not be applied here.

One year for this crime seems reasonable to me.

[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.

[CasearianDaoist]

Animal abuse is criminalized in the state of New York, as it should be everywhere. There is actually an ASPCA unit in the NYPD with radio cars, uniforms and even guns.

[Sangamon Kid]

Are you standing in for Tabitha Soren?

Yes, unfortunately she got tossed into the same compactor by those who think humans and animals have equal value.

[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....

[jerrymdss]

Dear Psycho_Bunny,

Your name fits you well -- since when does an adult criminal convicted of rape of a 16-year old girl receive probaton?

[neutrino]

Restitution in cases of theft of this type works better.

Very well. If and when he can bring those kittens back to life, I'll consider that option.

[Pistias]

What gives with people wanting to hurt animals?

You don't get it because you're probably too much of a sweetheart to get it. IMHO, (I not being much of a sweetheart, or at least being acquainted with being an @$$hole) people hurt animals for the same reason they hurt other people--convenience, or to refute their own weakness by exercising power over another.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Sounds like a parallel to the "Birdman of Alcatraz". I have also heard that allowing inmates to keep and train pets as a reward for good behavior has be an outstanding success in a few prisons. Prisoners will work their butts off to keep that pet healthy and fed.

[chadmaster]

Everyone seems to forget this was a government official. Government officials ought to and must be held to a higher standard of conduct than the average person, as they ought to and should be setting an example to others (especially in a prison!). That said, he deserves the harshest possible sentence in this case, because he, of all people, should be upholding the law, not breaking it.

[Pistias]

Is the use of the word "creature" a Freudian slip?

Creature in the older sense implies a created being, human, animal, or otherwise. Nowadays it carries a connotation of negativity or brutality.

[steve-b]

Yeah, and positions of petty authority attract such people, which is why they need to be carefully screened. (The accounts that have been coming out about airport security people reflect the same phenomenon, though acted out to a lesser degree because they are under more public scrutiny.)

[Dimensio]

Yes, unfortunately she got tossed into the same compactor by those who think humans and animals have equal value.

Yes, those callous fiends who don't agree that a police officer who accidentally triggers a miscarriage in a drug-crazed woman (whom the officer didn't know was pregnant at the time) should be charged with FIRST DEGREE MURDER!

Personally I would think that those equating human and animal life here would be clamoring about for the death penalty for the guard in this case. I disagree, personally, as brutal torture would be more appropriate IMO.

[truenospinzone]

or to refute their own weakness by exercising power over another.

Exactly. This guy has probably violated a prisoner or two with a broom handle as well; no one could do this to a kitten(s) and have ANY respect for human life.

[Sangamon Kid]

Just becuase justice is not done elsewhere does not mean it should not be applied here.

The work "justice" implies that the rights of some person have been violated. Animals never did and never will have "rights". They have always been considered "property" in the eyes of the law, unless of course you're a Hindu or practicing animist. This is one of the sad but inevitable results of evolutionary thought, of which many even on Free Republic have bought into, lock, stock and barrel. The twisted thinking of our politically correct judicial system only reveals how morally corrupt we have become.

People who are cruel to animals may have some pyschological problems, but criminalizing the act of cruelty to animals is absurd, unless of course you think you're no better than the mice in your cupboard.