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Saturday, March 08, 2003

By Marylynne Pitz, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

If you are a spectator at a dogfight, you can be charged with a felony, the state Supreme Court ruled this week.

The unanimous decision elated Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., who has already succeeded in persuading the state Legislature to toughen Pennsylvania's animal cruelty law.

"You don't have dogfighting unless somebody wants to watch it," Zappala said yesterday, adding that animal cruelty has historically been treated as a summary offense that resulted in fines but no jail time.

Under the unanimous ruling, published Tuesday, spectators convicted of watching a dogfight could face 2 1/2 to seven years in jail.

The opinion, written by Justice Russell Nigro, overturns a decision by Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge David Cashman, who reasoned that part of the state's animal cruelty law is unconstitutional because it criminalizes a person's mere presence at a dogfight.

Based on his finding, Cashman rejected the guilty pleas of two West End men, Erik Dwayne Craven of Ingram, and Otis George Townsend, also known as Gregory Townsend, of Fairywood.

Craven and Townsend were charged with attending a dogfight and with conspiracy to attend. They were prepared to plead guilty to one count each of attending a dogfight. Both men are in their 20s.

The district attorney's office appealed Cashman's ruling to the state Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court rejected Cashman's reasoning, saying the law does not criminalize a person's mere presence at an animal fight. Instead, the court held, the law makes it a crime to attend a dogfight as a spectator.

A spectator, the court said, witnesses an exhibition, such as a sports event.

"A spectator does more than a person who is merely present at a particular place by happenstance, since a spectator, by definition, makes a conscious choice to view and witness an exhibition," Nigro wrote.

Zappala said charges against Craven and Townsend do not have to be refiled because the two men were charged appropriately. Zappala said his office will ask that the men's cases be rescheduled for a hearing in criminal court.