Gainesville couple Luis Enrique Quinones, 29, and Myres Luanny Thomas, 29, are under arrest today for the death of their pet parrot. Police say that Quinones slammed the bird on the floor during an argument with Thomas.
Quinones had a curious defense. He hurt the parrot so he would not hit his girlfriend. He was upset after learning that his girlfriend told him that she had a beer at work. Thomas told him to leave and started throwing his stuff out the door. That is when Quinones decided to vent his anger at the parrot as a surrogate for his girlfriend. Thomas responded by punching Quinones in the face and throwing a vase at him.
It is not clear why Thomas was charged. Presumably, it was the punch in the face, though such a punch could be viewed as a response to the attack on the bird. The problem is that pets are treated as chattel under the law and, if the bird was already dead, it could be viewed as simple assault. Ironically, she is facing the more serious charges of simple assault and battery.
What do you think the proper sentence should be for Quinones if found guilty?
Source: Miami Herald
Malisha,
likewise, he could avoid bar brawls that ended with sirens and squad cars and bloodshed in public.
++++++++++++++++++++
Which is preferable?
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One of the Milwaukee suburbs is Saint Francis.
http://www.ci.stfrancis.wi.gov/
They put in a tornado warning siren. Right after they did that, a tornado came in and tore it out. The first time the tornado siren went off, it got wasted.
A lady goes to her priest one day and tells him, ‘Father, I have a problem.
I have two female parrots, but they only know how to say one thing.’
‘What do they say?’ the priest inquired.
‘They say, ‘Hi, we’re prostitutes. Do you want to have some fun?”
‘That’s obscene!’ the priest exclaimed, then he thought for a moment.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I may have a solution to your problem. I have two male talking parrots whom I have taught to pray and read the bible.
Bring your two parrots over to my house, and we’ll put them in the cage with Francis and Joe. My parrots can teach your parrots to praise and worship, and your parrots are sure to stop saying that phrase in no time.’
‘Thank you,’ the woman responded, ‘this may very well be the solution.’
The next day, she brought her female parrots to the priest’s house. As he ushered her in, she saw that his two male parrots were inside their cage, holding rosary beads and praying. Impressed, she walked over and placed her parrots in with them. After a few minutes, the female parrots cried out in unison: ‘Hi, we’re prostitutes. Do you want to have some fun?’
There was stunned silence.
Then, one male parrot looked over at the other male parrot and said ‘Put the bloody beads away, Francis, our prayers have been answered.’
A man goes into a pet shop to buy a parrot. The shop owner points to three identical-looking parrots on a perch and says, “The parrot on the left costs $500.”
“Why does the parrot cost so much?” asks the customer. The owner says “Well, the parrot knows how to do legal research.”
The customer then asks about the next parrot, to be told that this one costs $1,000 because it can do everything the other parrot can do plus it knows how to write a brief that will win any case.
Naturally, the increasingly startled customer asks about the third parrot, to be told that it costs $4,000. Needless to say, this begs the question, “What can it do?” To which the owner replies, “To be honest, I’ve never seen him do a darn thing, but the other two call him Senior Partner.”
In the late 1980s I remember reading something in the DV literature about our society tolerating wife-battering because if violent men could have their rage drained off and their anger management problems “managed” by knocking the Missus around a bit, usually that would keep the violence from erupting or causing great PUBLIC harm outside the house. The idea was, essentially, that if a guy could take a few swipes at night at his ole lady, he could make it through the day at work without hurting his co-workers or attacking his boss, likewise, he could avoid bar brawls that ended with sirens and squad cars and bloodshed in public. Why? Because if he started up with another man, the other man would HAVE to respond with equal or greater violence or be seen as a wus, so it would be best that he started up with his wife, who could avoid escalating the violence by simply weeping, crying out, feeling guilty, and/or making silly girl attempts to “hit him back.”
The idea was that the society’s allowing a guy to “administer physical punishment” to his wife was a safety valve to avoid public displays of violence and rage that could do some REAL harm.
Then there started to be a great brou-ha-ha about domestic violence and after most of it was just plain denied, some of it turned into “reciprocal restraining orders,” and some of it resulted in actual social and legal punishments.
Was there a coincident rise in violence outside the home? I don’t know, haven’t studied this question.
But very interesting, about the “I had to kill the bird to avoid punching the girlfriend” defense.
Do we have to trade dead pets for battered wives? In which case, should women with angry husbands get pitbulls? And is the woman’s action in punching the parrot-killer protected by the SYG law? Can you stand your ground on the dead body of a bird? And — oh — why do these two characters look like actors in an X-Files movie?
Darren,
A TRA ( Temporary Restraining Order) for nothing. Because somebody’s being a total (how to say word in Eastern European) ( How say Bitc- in Polack-?)
The female canines have too many lives. Tell them to get a real job.
Woosty: You still do not see the point. An owner of an animal can legally put that animal to death for any reason. The statute for animal cruelty only applies when cruel means are used. The best the law can levy in this case would be either a malicious mischief complaint or a killing of a pet animal and in this case it only would apply if the bird was the property of the woman, which as Gene H. observed this was not mentioned. Based on these restrictions the intent of the offender to kill the animal is not sufficient in of itself to prove animal cruelty. I know this because I have seen the courts rule in this manner. The law makes no differenciation between killing an unrestricted animal for fun, for a trophy or because “he could”.
Moreover, importing speculation as to what a particular act might lead to in the future as a basis for charging someone with a crime is a dangerous course to navigate. While it might work for bail setting hearings (and even in this case it is generally limited to assaulting or intimidating witnesses or the public or propensity for flight) it does not in itself meet any standard which would survive a probable cause review by a judge.
I have personally witnessed members from Child Protective Service, which in my opinon is one of the top two worst state agencies in WA, do just this. They would call up our department and demand we arrest some parent because they spanked or lighty slapped a child in the mouth to discipline the child. After determining from talking with them there was no violation of the criminal code, I would tell the CPS worker there was not only No probable cause to arrest the parent, there wasn’t even any reasonable suspicion to detain or investigate them. It was ALWAYS the case after hearing this, the CPS worker would demand I arrest the person because they would claim the parent would later start abusing the child more. One even wanted me to arrest the mother to “set an example” for other parents. Entirely arbitrary and totally without probable cause. and it just solidified my belief they cause more damage than good.
This is the reason we have to judge whether to charge someone or not based entirely on the elements of the crime and not what we “Think” MIGHT happen in the future. It is described in a very important difference: The rule of law, or the rule of men. The latter almost always leads to abuse of office and corruption, the former is the more transparent and just.
Matt Johnson 1, June 24, 2012 at 6:31 pm
ID707,
He won’t break his fist on the wall in jail. There aren’t birds there. He might get drowned in the toilet if he tries it.
A while ago a University of Wisconsin football coach’s son got into an argument with somebody, put the parrot in the microwave and turned it on. What happened to the a—– who did that? Not much.
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
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I don’t care about your moderation.
I’ll bet he breaks his fist on the wall next time——in the jail. Maybe he’d have a better defense if he’d hit her!?
I had not looked at this thread before, because it said something about dead birds and I am more interested in dead chickens than dead parrots. But I just checked into it now. I’ll try to digest all this. So far, it doesn’t fly. I’d say I’m just up in the air about it at this point. When I read the initial description of the guy’s behavior, though, you could’a knocked me over with a feather. Wow, he really got mad. What did she do to rattle his cage, give him the bird?
Woosty,
Life is the proverbial elephant and we are the blind who perceive it.
The vid is an example. Some will see it si, and others will see it so.
Some at one level and others at theirs
The joy is the right to have your own experience and then to discuss it with others, if that is your pleasure also.
We discuss here what our children and others children around the world are subjected to. We do the same about ourselves, the wives of islam, the ones of the other religions. We discuss mostly violations of one sort or another here.
Terrible things. And we don’t even react with horror at the enormity of these offenses. Yee gods, the things we see depicted here. The outright evil, in practically all forms.
And then comes a parable of life, with equal value as that of the prodigal son or the good samaritan, and we get upset because it shows a hand on a girls pubis.
We do not see the hand manipulating, we see no closeups of her face or his—the prurient content is excluded. IE, it is not pruríently motivated.
And the purpose of the showing is to show how the passing of a milestone of growth can be seen by two young blind persons—-two girls.
We strain at the dinosaur and can not accept evolution for that. A rough parallel featured today as a theme.
That’s how I see the elephant.