Wyoming Animal Cruelty Laws Changed

by Sherry Morse

Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal recently signed into law a bill making more severe acts of animal cruelty that cause death or prompt euthanization felonies.

The new law also makes "owning, possessing or training dogs or fowl for the exhibition of fighting" a felony.

Individuals found guilty of violating the law are subject to being imprisoned for as many as 24 months and ordered to pay a fine of as much as $5,000.

"This one was tough," Representative Becket Hinckley (R-Cheyenne), who sponsored the legislation, told a Casper Star-Tribune reporter. "We didn’t think we were going to get it," even though a compromise reducing the maximum jail term from 60 months was reached.

The enactment of the law was prompted by the mutilation and killing of a 3-year-old Basset Hound named Dexter in the town of Torrington in 2001. The 20-year-old college student convicted of the crime was sentenced to only eight months in jail.

© 2003 Animal News Center, Inc.