Agenda - 05-17-1983 - Laserfiche WebLink

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" ■ 300'N Tryon Street 4 r . Hillsborougn C 27278 732-9351 ext 305 ."" HEALTH DEPARTMENT rtril ine 88-1501 MeDane,ine 227.2032 • _ Ournam line F.38-7333 MEMORANDUM Carr MW Mall Stifle 225 100 N Greensboro Street Carrtroro, TO: Attendees of Animal Cruelty Investigation Meeting 942416N C 2750 8 FROM: Jerry Robinson Jerry POD1nSOn M.P Director DATE: December. 30, 1981 The material below was assembled and distributed as background information for out luncheon meeting at the Caolina Inn on January 7, 1982. The material was taken from two Institute of Government publications which were authored by Attorney Patrike Solberg.* NOTE: If the reader wishes to immediately be informed about appointment of animal cruelty investigators, turn to page 4, paragraph 2. ----- Animal Abuse riminal Law, "It is never lawful for a man to take pleasure directly in the p-arn-given to brutes, because in doing so, man degrades and brutalizes his own nature." 1 In 1641, the Massachu- __ setts Bay Colony enacted the first animal protection law; during the 1800s nearly every state followed the Massachusetts lead.2 North Carolina's law was enacted in 1881.° G.S. § 14-360 provides that it is a misdemeanor punishable by a $500 fine or six months in prison for any person to "willfully overdrive, overload, wound, injure, torture, torment, deprive of necessary sustenance, cruelly beat, needlessly mutilate or kill" any "useful" living creature. It does not, however, prohibit shooting-"game" for human food. It is important that only "willful" actions are prohibited. In defining "willful," the North Carolina Supreine Court stated that the term "implies doing the act purposely and d4liberately,, indicating a purpose to do it without authority-- careless whether he has tie right or not . . . without just 9use, excuse or justification." Thus in one North Carolina case, the defendant shot a dog that belonged to another person because it had previously roamed around the place where the defendant worked and had once burst in the front door and made the place smell foul. The defendant was convicted I animal abuse because the dog's actions did not justify killing it. Note that the defendant did not torture the dog--he killed-it without just cause. In another case,7 the defendant killed someachickens because they would not stay out of his pea patch. He argued that the killing was not willful because it was done in a fit of angeri The court rejected this argument: "Since the enactment of thi4 statute it has been unlawful in this state for a man to