Posted on 12/08/2004 12:45:36 PM PST by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
SKOWHEGAN -- A 26-year-old Fairfield man was sentenced to 18 months behind bars Tuesday for beating a 4-month-old wolf-hybrid puppy to death with his fists.
James Mayhew pleaded guilty to aggravated animal cruelty in Somerset County Superior Court. Superior Court Chief Justice Nancy Mills sentenced Mayhew to five years in prison with all but 18 months suspended. Mayhew will be on probation for four years after he is released.
Kennebec and Somerset County District Attorney Evert N. Fowle said Tuesday afternoon that his office treats animal cruelty cases seriously because studies show a link between abuse of animals and violence against humans.
"People who would abuse or torture innocent animals are people who would do the same (to humans) under the right circumstances," Fowle said.
It was the second time in less than a week that a prison sentence was handed down for the relatively rare felony charge of aggravated animal cruelty in Fowle's jurisdiction.
In Augusta last week, Superior Court Justice Joseph Jabar sentenced a Randolph man to four years behind bars for running over and killing his girlfriend's pregnant cat.
Jabar said the act amounted to domestic abuse because it was an attempt to control his girlfriend. One witness described the man "howling and laughing," before killing the cat.
In the Mayhew case, Fowle said there was no link to domestic violence. The Fairfield man was apparently upset because the puppy urinated in his apartment.
"He beat the dog to death because it urinated inside his residence, but the dog urinated because it was scared to death of him because of past abusive treatment," Fowle said.
Police said the puppy was beaten over a period of two months and died on July 31.
An autopsy concluded the puppy had a broken rib, a severely bruised lung and bruised muscles around the head and ears.
Police said at the time of Mayhew's arrest, a veterinarian who performed the autopsy concluded the puppy either bled to death or suffocated on its own blood.
Mayhew had no other pets or animals at his Mountain Avenue home. He apparently had seen the dog advertised for sale and bought it at eight or six weeks old.
Have the "if this was a cat and not a cute little puppy everyone would not be up in arms over this" people show up yet?
We are reading a lot into the article that isn't there. We assume, and it has been said more than once that this guy killed the puppy for fun, or for pleasure, or for sport. I don't believe he did it for any of those reasons. I think the guy lost his temper and killed the puppy in frustration and anger.
He got a 5 year sentence suspended after 18 months, and if he does anything like this within the suspension time, he will be back in prison until the 5 years is over. This is indicative that he may have a prior record of losing control of his temper. We don't know enough about this guy to really question the sentence. Did he have prior assault convictions? Restraining orders against him from an ex-spouse or girlfriend because of physical abuse? We don't know, and it is entirely possible that the judge was hard on him because of an escalating propensity to violence.
I would imagine that the mainstream media is in quite a quandry about reporting this, because if they reveal a record and show the guy as a bastard, then they're not going to get the prisoners rights sympathy thing, but if they don't disclose his entire past, then they can't capitalize on the guy going away for killing a cute cuddly puppy. It looks to me from following this thread that they actually accomplished both goals.
And yes, it has been well documented that people that kill animals out of either pleasure or anger are more likely to, at some point, hurt, maime or kill a human out of pleasure or anger. The serial killers whos pasts they have studied have shown this over and over and over again from Jeff Dahmer to Charles Manson to Ted Bundy (Is that his name, Ted?)
People that abuse family members also abuse the family pets. It's just the way it goes.
Hunters that hunt for sport as well as for food, or even hunters that hunt for trophies are different than recreational killers with the psychological propensity to become serial killers or abusers, because a hunter will not torture his prey. Hunters go for the clean shot and the quick kill, where-as, the typical psychotic mind will torture or abuse the victim for a period of time, from minutes to hours to days or weeks or months before finally putting the thing (or person) out of its misery. Part of the pleasure for this person is the torture.
The autopsy report on the puppy showed prior abuse, which means that the guy beat the dog on more than one occasion. He probably didn't even kill the dog on purpose this time, but this is how death from beating often happens to a family member or a pet. The guy just loses control, and doesn't stop until the victim isn't moving. If he did this to a dog, then yes, eventually he will do it to a person. History has shown it to be true.
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