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Spokane.net »
Sudoku
 | Friday, July 12, 2002 |
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Idaho Accused cat killer wins Angie Gaddy
Coeur d'Alene _ Unlike the four cats he allegedly killed, Dale Crooks Jr. landed on his feet Thursday. The 19-year-old Post Falls man was accused of poisoning four pesky neighborhood cats by placing a cocktail of tuna fish and antifreeze in his yard last fall. Kootenai County prosecutors filed felony animal poisoning charges that could have landed Crooks in prison for up to three years. But a jury of six men and six women didn't buy the case. After about two hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted Crooks on all four counts. "It's been an eye-opener for Dale," said defense attorney Gary Amendola, who argued that Idaho law allows a person to kill an animal if it does harm or threatens another's property. "He never intended to kill those animals. He's obviously sorry." Kootenai County Deputy Prosecutor Jim Reierson argued that Crooks maliciously tried to kill four neighborhood cats -- Lars, J.J., Kirk and Little Princess -- last Octo But Amendola said the neighbors, who let the cats roam freely on other neighbors' property, had been warned. "As a property owner, you have a right to do as you please and you have the right to protect it," Amendola said in closing arguments. Some questioned why the case, which lasted for two days, cost thousands of dollars and took up courtroom space in a backlogged system, even went to trial. "What's the matter with the system that an issue like this gets blown out of proportion, when there's a pedophile running around probably right now," said Jerry Nelson, one of Crooks' neighbors. "It's ridiculous." Nelson said Reierson is a publicity seeker who wants to make a case for himself. He pointed to Reierson's history in Spokane, where two years ago he sued a veterinarian in small claims court in Spokane for malpractice after his cat, Lucky, died. "To waste this kind of resources on a misdemeanor dispute on whatever (Reierson's) belief is on animals, is not worth any of the effort to prosecute this case," Nelson said. "To take a case like this and blow it all out of proportion when it could have been a misdemeanor, is that he's just out to seek publicity." Nelson said Crooks offered to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, but prosecutors chose to charge it as a felony case. Reierson said his views on animals had nothing to with prosecution. "I don't take these cases personally," he said after the verdict. "We don't file cases on a personal vendetta." He said the case would have been filed if a dog or a horse or any person's animal had been poisoned. And any prosecutor in the office would have taken it. "It was not just because this was a cat," he said, adding that the case had a lot of evidence to support filing charges. "By filing these charges on this case, we were not ignoring other cases," Reierson said. "This case is not a budget-breaking case." But Amendola wondered why the case went forward. "I think that's because there was no control within the prosecutor's office," he said. The cats' owners, Margaret Poutre and Tim Kolb, had a granddaughter and daughter, respectively, who found the dying cats. They said they didn't want to see Crooks go to prison, but to hear him say that his actions were wrong. "I never heard an `I'm sorry' from him," Poutre said. "He never responded as a neighbor." But Nelson, who was just as bothered by Poutre's and Kolb's cats, said Crooks shouldn't have had to apologize, since they let their cats roam free through the neighborhood. The cats would urinate and defecate in neighbor's yards and flower beds, urinate in people's cars when the windows were rolled down and even try to get into their homes, Nelson said. Nelson, who grew up in rural Eastern Washington, said every good neighbor knows the rules of pet ownership. "It's not the neighborhood's responsibility to take care of the cats," Nelson said. • Angie Gaddy can be reached at (208) 765-7124 or by e-mail at angieg@spokesman.com.
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