Government

Apropos Of Nothing In Particular, Let's Check The Animal Cruelty Laws In South Dakota

Justice for Cricket!

By  
on

Funny dachshund dog listening to music.South Dakota governor Kristi Noem is thirsty for the vice presidential nomination and she’s ticking off all the boxes. She went down to Texas to get her teeth “fixed” and put out a chintzy informercial about it managing to tick off every professional in her own state. And, of course, she’s put out her book extolling her MAGA bona fides.

It was all going to plan until…

8oeduk

Yes, for some reason, Noem — and every person close to her who had an opportunity to look at her book before it saw the light of day — thought her hagiography would benefit from an extended anecdote about killing a puppy for inconveniencing her bird hunt with its youth and lack of training.

The Guardian obtained excerpts from her book.

By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.

Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another”.

****

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”

Most people would invest in training, or seek to rehouse the dog, or at the very least not talk about puppy murder. But Kristi Noem wants you to know that she is not most people.

Sponsored

If I were to venture a guess at what she was thinking, I’d assume she had mainlined conservative media’s obsession with Joe Biden’s dog Commander and his history of biting Secret Service agents (Commander’s, not Joe’s… as far as we know!) and thought she’d score some points by landing on the side of murdering aggressive dogs.

She miscalculated.

And when you’ve lost Catturd…

But seriously, animals sometimes don’t survive on a farm. Indeed, some livestock exist to be killed. But South Dakota has laws distinguishing between livestock and dogs:

Sponsored

(8) “Livestock,” any agricultural or commercial animal owned, bred, or raised for profit, but not including dogs, cats, rabbits, or other household pets;

And when it comes to household animals, the law makes an exception for licensed veterinarians to euthanize those cute critters. Noem doesn’t frame her story as though Cricket took a trip to the vet.

From CBS: “Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did,” Noem wrote. “Whether running the ranch or in politics, I have never passed on my responsibilities to anyone else to handle. Even if it’s hard and painful. I followed the law and was being a responsible parent, dog owner, and neighbor.”

40-1-21. Killing or injuring animal of another as misdemeanor–Authorized euthanasia excepted

No person may intentionally kill any animal of any age or value, the property of another, nor intentionally injure or mistreat any such animal. A violation of this section is a Class 1 misdemeanor. This section may not be construed to prevent euthanasia by a licensed veterinarian with proper authority from the animal’s owner nor may it prevent acts of euthanasia authorized by this chapter. This section may not be construed to prohibit euthanasia conducted by the municipality or under a municipality’s animal control activities. This section may not be construed to prohibit activities conducted under chapter 40-34.

Maybe Noem did take the dog to a vet and she’s just fronting that she personally Old Yeller’d poor Cricket. Either way, its a political miscue for the ages.

But the law might be the least of her worries. Does anybody have eyes on John Wick right now?

UPDATE: So some folks have flagged the clause “the property of another” as meaning that the law wouldn’t apply to an animal’s legal owner. Personally, I’d read that as expansive and thought it was in there to cover harming someone else’s animal too — which I thought the law might need since theoretically harming someone else’s animal would trigger a bunch of laws beyond cruelty since it’s pretty much straight up theft.

But I’m wrong about this reading. Professor, Matthew Liebman, the Chair of the Justice for Animals Program at the University of San Francisco School of Law clarified that limiting animal cruelty laws only to non-owners “is a somewhat common aspect of archaic anticruelty laws.”

Instead, he directed me to different provisions of South Dakota law, specifically 40-1-2.3 and 40-1-2.4, prohibiting mistreatment and cruelty regardless of ownership. “Cruelty and mistreatment are statutorily defined (40-1-1) in ways that arguably cover executing a dog, he explained.

(4) “Cruelty,” to intentionally, willfully, and maliciously inflict gross physical abuse on an animal that causes prolonged pain, that causes serious physical injury, or that results in the death of the animal;
. . .
(9) “Mistreat,” to cause or permit the continuation of unjustifiable physical pain or suffering of an animal.

Looking at this language, her book (if we believe her own account) admits that she acted intentionally and willfully. Making the question whether or not shooting a puppy would constitute  “gross physical abuse” and cause “unjustifiable physical pain.”

Here the professor notes two relevant exemptions:

“(2) any humane killing of an animal” and “(5) any reasonable action taken by a person for the destruction or control of an animal known to be dangerous, a threat, or injurious to life, limb, or property.”

Shooting a dog shouldn’t constitute a “humane killing” — and frankly the whole section of the earlier statute requiring licensed vets to euthanize animals suggests legislators envisioned something more clinical when considering a pet’s demise. “Humane killing,” Professor Liebman notes, is defined as “to cause the death of an animal in a manner to limit the pain or suffering of the animal as much as reasonably possible under the circumstances.” And the dog had killed chickens so there’s an argument for euthanizing the dog somehow though perhaps the law doesn’t extend to make popping Cricket like Tommy DeVito thinking he was on his way to get made.

Is the account in the book “reasonable” under the statute? “To me, it’s a resounding ‘no,’ but I’m not a South Dakota juror,” Liebman said.

So there you have it. My simple bit on Kristi “Poodle Pumper” Noem went way deeper than expected!

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Topics

, , ,