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.

[MaggieMay]

I do think that on the farm, cats were used to keep the mice population down,period. How people dealt with kitten/puppy overpopulation was by drowning them.People did not have access to veterinary care. Now, there is a tremendous effort to spay/neuter animals. There are animal shelters in many area's. The actions of this guard were to deposite the mother cat and five kittens in a trash compactor and crush them. There were alternatives a phone call away, he chose the cruelest one. This I believe was what the judge was addressing.

[Renatus]

If the guy found a nest of baby rats would the outcome be the same i.e. a year in jail? If not what's the diffeence?

[MaggieMay]

If the guard kept the mother cat and kittens, he wouldn't have to worry about those despicable rats.

[Renatus]

he wouldn't have to worry about those despicable rats.

What's the difference between throwing cute little rats to a cat and throwing despicable little cats into a trash compactor?

[MaggieMay]

I know you are going to call me a coward, but I have to go the bus stop to pick up my son. Like Tom said in the(Tom and Jerry) cartoons, "I just hate those mieces to pieces".

[Savage Beast]

Oh all right, Sang. I'm awake--not that I wanted to be. I take it from your response that you're opposed to wanton cruelty too. Okay. Okay. Glad to know it. You don't hafta be so touchy. I think it's that I hate cruelty more than anything. Maybe you do too.

[Sangamon Kid]

Whatever other problems society has don't excuse letting someone who does something you seem to agree is reprehensible go unpunished.

Agreed. I have no problems with punishing the guy for the criminal destruction of private property if it applied in this case. But I would ask you this: Who did this man wrong? Did he wrong the inmate, the cats, or just our sensiblities? Was the inmate allowed to have cats? If there was a rule that no pets are allowed, then the inmate had no power of disposition over the cats. Were the cats wronged? Impossible, because cats don't have "rights". So really, that leaves our sensiblities as what suffered the wrong. My sensiblities suffer all the time, but the law should't allow me to receive compensation every time I'm outraged about something.

And MaggieMay is right that something is criminal pretty much whenever the legislature passes laws saying it is, your property or not.

I can't argue with that. I might think the legislature is goofy passing such laws, but even bad law is law nonetheless. But I must add that legislating a standard of "deviancy" and "cruelty" is a slippery slope at best.

[#3Fan]

While cruelty to animals is a senseless waste of resources, animals are merely property. sending someone to prison for a year for killing some kittens is utterly useless.

It is very useful to lock someone up who needlessly tortures animals, whether or not it's currently constitutional. Every cat ands dog I know agrees with me on this. :^)

[Sangamon Kid]

OFF TOPIC

By the way, anybody rooting for the politically incorrect Fightin' Illini over Kansas tonight? I hope those Injuns exact cruel and unusual punishment over those cute, feathery, little Jayhawks. ;^)

[#3Fan]

I HATE cats; therefore this incident doesn't bother me at all except the jail sentence for the guy that compacted the cats. God gave man dominion over beasts, especially cats.

God also says to observe civil law. And our society and our law has made it clear that useless torture will not be tolerated.

[triplejake]

The "victim" is society; we find it disgusting that someone would be so cruel to a living thing, and thus we (through legislatures) make it illegal. You don't need to give cats their own rights to prohibit cruelty to them, whether or not they have owners. There are plenty of other crimes like this where there is no human victim (like drug laws, though that is a very different can of worms).

[Sangamon Kid]

Are there any trash compactors up in Madison tonight?

[triplejake]

Frank Williams & Co are looking mighty good. As an Indiana grad, would be happy to see another Big 10 school in Final 8.

[Sangamon Kid]

...useless torture will not be tolerated.

Right! I agree! Only profitable tortue should be allowed!

[pssst...#3Fan, just givin' you a hard time! ;^)]

[#3Fan]

If the guy found a nest of baby rats would the outcome be the same i.e. a year in jail? If not what's the diffeence?

A rat spreads disease, hides and overruns your home. Cats do not spread disease if cared for and will not overrun your home because it will not hide. Killing a rat in such a manner therefore is not useless torture. Killing a cat is.

[Aliska]

I wonder, too, and hope we will learn more about the inmate. What that guard did was sickening and I'm glad we are to the point in this society that people are insensed about it.

Disposing of unwanted animals used to be cruel and inhumane. It's all so very sad.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

The guard broke a law and he was tried and convicted in accordance with the law. No big deal.

If there are any further conclusions to be drawn I would say that

- The guard was doing what he did to torture the inmate not the kittens. He was trying to show his power and dominance over the inmate, and to hurt the inmate in a cruel and unusual way. In a way, this is a sort of rape, an act of brutality, power and humiliation.

- My guess would be that prison guards in general don't fare well as part of a general prison population, and a prison guard that became a prisoner in this particular manner will fare particularly poorly precisely because of the above.

[#3Fan]

By the way, anybody rooting for the politically incorrect Fightin' Illini over Kansas tonight? I hope those Injuns exact cruel and unusual punishment over those cute, feathery, little Jayhawks. ;^)

I bet so. :^)