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Originally Posted by my miss storm cat
Respectfully, this means nothing to me.
The legal system is so screwed up and it's all about who has which attorney... I'm not slamming you and I'm sure you know that.
I think all the jurors, or some of them, needed to hear was "animal cruelty" and an assumption was made. Maybe people want so desperately to do what's right that they go into deliberations with a preconceived notion without even realizing it.
Anyway, here's an update. The charge was reduced to a misdemeanor...
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_14135913
"Mr. Kriple is guilty of embracing the idea that this horse should not be put down,"
I choose to believe that. |
There are cases where juries get it wrong. We hear about these cases sometimes. But these cases are the exception to the rule. Juries get it right 95% of the time. When they do err, it's usually on the side of acquitting a guilty person. They will rarely find an innocent person guilty and when they do it's usually a case of mistaken identity.
By the way, when does a guilty person ever admit that they're guilty? Just because we have heard a few quotes from this guy proclaiming his innocense, that hardly means a thing. Guys always proclaim their innocense.
Every person that heard the facts of the case, came to the same conclusion, every single person from the CHRB investigators, to the prosecutor, to the judge, and to the jury. I highly doubt all these people got it wrong. It's possible but it's unlikely.
If you read the judge's quote, he never said that the horse should have been put down. The judge's simply said, "He should have done something with the animal." That is the point. Nobody would convict this guy for making a judgement call that it wasn't time to put the horse down. This guy got convicted because he was doing nothing to care for this horse. If he wanted to give the horse more time, that would have been fine as long as he was properly caring for the horse which he obviously was not.
Let's not forget that this guy has a pattern of neglecting his horses. In an interview last week, Mrakich (the prosecutor) said Kriple "has a pattern of extreme negligence when it comes to taking care of horses."
Mrakich cited a case in 2002 in which Kriple failed to care for a racehorse that suffered a fractured knee at Los Alamitos.
In the 2002 case, the California Horse Racing Board "found that (Kriple's) conduct was detrimental to horse racing," Mrakich said, but they did not suspend his license to train horses or forward the case to prosecutors for possible criminal charges.