BOULDER, Colo., Feb. 3 (UPI) -- Animal rights activists said a Colorado college student who admitted killing a raccoon with a baseball bat got off with a "slap on the wrist."
Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett said his office declined to prosecute Jace Roberts Griffiths, 20, on a felony animal cruelty charge after Griffiths admitted killing the animal so he could "take its hide."
Griffiths, a University of Colorado student, holds a valid state hunting license Garnett said permits him to hunt animals for their fur -- which is, legally speaking, what he was doing when he killed the raccoon, the Boulder Daily Camera reported.
But Rita Anderson of the Boulder chapter of In Defense of Animals said Garnett's office is misreading the law. The Colorado statute sets out to define legal methods of hunting animals. In the case of raccoons, the law permits shooting the animals with a shotgun, handgun or crossbow, or trapping them.
Related
The law later states, "any method of take not listed herein shall be prohibited" -- and that, Anderson said, justifies prosecution on the animal cruelty charge.
"Bludgeoning or whacking or batting is not listed," Anderson said. "I do believe animal cruelty charges could have been brought. The hunting excuse was utterly absurd."
Garnett, who defended his department's handling of animal cruelty cases, said no legal precedent exists for moving forward with the charges.
"We looked very closely at that case and could not find any charges that we felt were appropriate," Garnett said. "We had no evidence the animal was not killed quickly and painlessly."
That didn't satisfy Anderson or other animal rights supporters.
"We have repeatedly in group meetings spoken to [Garnett] about how cruelty to animal cases have not been given what we believe to be the right consideration," Anderson said. "These people are getting a slap on the wrist."
