Are animal abusers properly punished? Area officials weigh in on use of Buster’s Law

By KATIE NOWAK
For The Saratogian
Chester Williamson was 16 when he killed Buster, an 18-month-old tabby cat, by dousing the animal with kerosene and lighting it on fire in Schenectady in 1997. Williamson received three years probation and court-ordered psychiatric counseling, a punishment that many felt did not match the severity of his crime.

That act of violence, and the subsequent fallout from public demand that more be done to punish people like Williamson, directly influenced the state Legislature’s passage of Buster’s Law in 1999, which makes some acts of animal cruelty felonies.

The fervor surrounding Buster’s death more than 10 years ago was echoed in recent weeks with the news that Robert Clow — who allegedly killed his girlfriend’s dog, Daisy, by tying her to a tree and shooting her three times with a .44 caliber Magnum — will not be charged under Buster’s Law.

In defending his decision not to charge Clow with a felony, Rensselaer County District Attorney Rich McNally previously told The Record in Troy that the statutes of Buster’s Law do not comply with this case because Clow’s conduct was not “intended to cause extreme physical pain or carried out in an especially depraved or sadistic manner.”

Instead, McNally said Clow killed Daisy because she was feeding on or playing with the carcass of a dead cat on his girlfriend’s porch. If done to specifically cause his girlfriend pain and suffering, as some animal rights activists claim, then it would have been elevated to a felony, he said.

“I get a lot of calls on almost every one of these cases,” McNally said. “People feel very strongly about animal abuse, and that’s understandable. And I think some folks would like to see every animal abuse case be a felony, but that’s just not the status of the law.”

Indeed, though it has resulted in hundreds of convictions throughout the state since its inception, the law has not often been applied within the Capital District. A survey of local district attorneys found few convictions under Buster’s Law throughout the past few years, compared with a larger number of misdemeanor animal cruelty cases.

Rensselaer County has had only one Buster’s Law case under McNally’s watch, when Hoosick Falls resident Michael Lohnes killed a stranger’s pet horse, named Skye, in 2008 by stabbing it as many as 20 times and slitting its throat. Initially charged with a misdemeanor, Lohnes was eventually convicted of felony aggravated animal cruelty and was sentenced in February to up to seven years in prison.

McNally said the conviction was “a pretty hard one … probably the biggest one I’ve seen in this district.”

Another high-profile Rensselaer County case was that of Matthew Beck, the Hoosick Falls dog warden who in 2009 shot several stray dogs in the head and buried them in a manure pile on his property. Beck was not charged under Buster’s Law and instead pleaded guilty to several misdemeanors. He spent only two weekends in jail and received three years’ probation at his sentencing in March.

The most recent Buster’s Law case in the Capital District occurred earlier this month when Justin C. Taylor of Ballston Spa allegedly killed his girlfriend’s Chihuahua during a domestic dispute.

Saratoga County District Attorney James A. Murphy III alleges that Taylor, a member of the Air National Guard, punched, kicked and then threw the dog, Kelvin, against the floor and wall, causing severe head trauma that eventually killed the tiny animal. In addition to assault charges against his girlfriend, Taylor faces two years in prison for the death of Kelvin. The case is pending.

Murphy said he has used Buster’s Law in a number of other cases, “in instances of severe and significant abuse. Studies show that when someone is willing to batter, torture, harm an animal, it’s not unusual for them to take the next step and harm a human.”

That was one of the driving forces behind the passage of Buster’s Bill, said the man who championed it, state Assemblyman Jim Tedisco, R-Schenectady.

Williamson killed Buster in Tedisco’s district, and Tedisco said he was inundated with phone calls from constituents and animal rights activists after the crime, clamoring for more to be done. Tedisco called the chief of police, who told him that while the crime was a misdemeanor, it should be considered a felony, since the FBI lists animal cruelty as a bridge crime, leading to other harmful activity in the future.

Williamson himself illustrated that grim concept. Over the next 10 years, he served a half-dozen stints in county jail, went to state prison on two felony charges and, in 2008, pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a 12-year-old mentally disabled girl he lured to a park near her home. He’s currently serving a 12-year prison sentence.

After Buster’s death, Tedisco sought to protect the world from people like notorious serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, both of whom had backgrounds of animal abuse.

“It’s important not only for our family pets, it’s important for our families and children to get these guys off the streets and get them some counseling and straighten them out,” Tedisco said. “I think a number of people across this state, the nation and the world will understand that these pets are part of our families. They give us unconditional love, and if we have that much disregard for these creatures, we tend to see that we have disregard for even humans later on, because that’s what directions these individuals take.”

Schenectady County District Attorney Robert Carney agreed with McNally’s assessment that not every case of abuse falls under Buster’s Law.

“It has to be fairly egregious conduct, but we’ve had that, unfortunately,” he said.

An example of that conduct is Thomas Hendricks II, who was sentenced to two years in county jail in May after he killed his wife’s two dachshund puppies, both less than a year old, and severely burned her toy poodle. He held one puppy under water and squeezed it to death, and beat the other with a pool cue. The poodle survived its injuries and was later readopted.

While heinous acts of animal abuse are ongoing in the Capital District, Tedisco is hopeful that Buster’s Law can eventually be amended and expanded to encompass all manners of abuse, and that the law can be applied appropriately. He disagrees with McNally’s decision not to apply the law in the Clow case, and thinks it’s representative of an overall misunderstanding of the law.

“We’re making headway, but these high-profile cases, where they pooh-pooh the law and have these misdemeanors and the low penalties, take us one step back,” Tedisco said. “We have to speak out when we see these types of things where the reality suggests this is a felony.”

Tedisco is pushing to further educate law enforcement officials, district attorneys, judges and the public about the dangers animal abusers pose to others. He also has several bills in the works that would set up a hotline to report abuse and animal hoarding, expand the definition of “companion animal” set forth in Buster’s Law and create a registry that would prevent an abuser who didn’t undergo mandatory counseling from adopting or purchasing a pet.

“I think we’ve come a million miles, and I think we’ve got 10 million miles to go,” Tedisco said. “I’m not totally displeased with the effectiveness of the law, but I think we have to continue to do more