Mann is charged with animal cruelty and torture after police found him with his skinned and baked cat that he was about to eat with onions. Police went to the apartment after a call from Mann’s father that he made been making strange comments. Mann is a known drug user and suffers from mental illness.
Chaplinski objected publicly to how Mann “is just being crucified” and noted that “I’ve represented people doing more horrible things to other people.” Then she added, “[a]t the end of the day, it’s meat. . . I don’t know why there’s the outrage about cooking a cat.”
Presumably another past client of Chaplinski would wholeheartedly agree:
In defense of Chaplinski, she was trying to direct attention to the obvious fact that this guy is mentally disturbed. She might have been a bit better off with avoiding the culinary point and sticking with the sanity issue.