The latest example of slap-on-the-wrist justice in animal cruelty cases came when Madison County Justice Court Judge Tommy Faulkner permitted Alonzo Esco to plead guilty Wednesday to two of nine counts of animal cruelty and dumping charges.
When charges were first made earlier this year against Esco, a former Canton animal Control officer, there was speculation that he had shot and dumped more than a 100 dogs and cats in Canton Creek and possibly at other sites.
Under Mississippi’s anemic animal cruelty misdemeanor laws the punishment certainly won’t fit the magnitude of Esco’s crime.
As a result of his guilty pleas, all Esco could receive is a maximum penalty of six months in jail for cruelty to an animal or a $1,000 fine, and a maximum fine of $400 for one count of illegally dumping an animal.
Before Judge Faulkner accepted Esco’s plea, the former dog control officer was facing five counts of animal cruelty and four counts of animal dumping.
Unfortunately, our state is one of only four states in the nation, and the only state in the South, that doesn’t have a felony penalty for the worst acts of animal cruelty against dogs and cats.
Apparently, our legislative and judicial systems don’t quite understand that playing footsie with animal abusers is the equivalent of playing with fire.
Though there is absolutely no indication Esco would harm a person, there are many other case studies that show animal abusers sometimes graduate to violent crimes against people.
One of the worst examples of that is Luke Woodham, who in 1997 when he was 16-years-old, started out by torturing and setting fire to his dog, Sparkle.
“I made my first kill,” he later told police. “We sprayed fluid down her throat. Her neck caught on fire inside and out. It was beautiful.”
Then in October 1997, Woodham beat and stabbed his 50-year-old mother to death in her bed, and went off to Pearl High School where he went on a shooting spree, killing two classmates and wounding seven others. That incident was the first of deadly mass shootings at schools in the United States.
For now, the Esco case is simply the latest bad example that animal rights activists are using to prod the Mississippi Legislature into making extreme animal cruelty a felony in our state.
Gail Brown, president of Mississippi Fighting Animal Cruelty Together, says her group is trying hard to get a felony animal cruelty law enacted in our state.
It is good that at least there are several Mississippians working toward that goal. We all need to face the fact that cruelty to animals is a disgrace and a danger to our society. The safety and well-being not only of animals, but sometimes of people can be what’s at stake.
Ashley Montague once commented:
“The indifference, callousness and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering in animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of the human spirit.”
We would hope that soon Mississippi will reach the point where every legislator and every judge would finally say “enough.” Not only is animal cruelty wrong, it is also wrong for someone, who has the ability to discourage evil, to do basically nothing about it.