Man convicted of dog abuse fails to show up for sentencing
An arrest warrant has been issued for a St. John’s man who starved his dog and left its desiccated remains in a suitcase. John Michael Corcoran was scheduled to be sentenced at provincial court in St. John’s Thursday morning.
However, the 33-year-old was a no-show. That prompted Crown prosecutor Robin Singleton to request a warrant for his arrest. Judge Jim Walsh complied.
Corcoran has pleaded guilty to a charge of animal cruelty in a case in which the details about the dog’s suffering caused the province’s chief veterinary officer to break down in tears.
While testifying at the sentencing hearing a few months ago, Dr. Laura Rogers described it as the worst case of emaciation she has seen in her 20 years of practice. Rogers was emotional as she described the suffering Diamond, a young pitbull, must have endured in the months leading up to its death.
“(In that state), a dog would get quite dizzy and weak and eventually can’t walk or even lift its head,” Rogers had said with a quaver in her voice.
As first reported by The Telegram in early February, the dog’s remains were found on Aug. 15, 2015. That day, employees from the Newfoundland and Labrador Housing Corp. contacted police after finding a suitcase that was seeping liquid in the basement of a unit on Buckmaster’s Circle. It was underneath a mound of clothing. Corcoran had just moved out of the unit and the workers were there to clean it and prepare it for the next tenant.
According to the facts of the case presented in court, when the workers entered the unit, they immediately noticed a strong, unpleasant smell, which they discovered was coming from the suitcase. They tried to open it, but with the liquid leaking through, the zipper was stuck. They called the police. When officers arrived, they cut the suitcase open and found a garbage bag. Inside were the dog’s remains, which were taken to Rogers later that day for examination and to determine the cause of death.
The dog was in such an emaciated state, there was virtually no muscle and no bone marrow left.
“The dog had basically wasted away,” Rogers had said. While the dog had access to water — or else it would have died of dehydration — she estimated it had been without food for months, if not years. She figured the dog’s remains had been inside the suitcase for up to three months.
There had been some decomposition, she said, but most of the damage was done before it died. Photos of the dog’s remains entered into evidence are too disturbing to publish.
Rogers said the dog’s claws were also extremely long, indicating it had been confined to a small space and had not walked in a long time.
Corcoran also pleaded guilty to unrelated charges — mischief and breaching a court order by not residing in the place he said he would.
In making her recommendations on sentencing, Singleton said Corcoran deserves jail time for the heartless suffering he caused his dog. She noted Corcoran’s neighbour, who had noticed the neglect, had confronted him about the dog and tried to contact authorities, to no avail. She said all Corcoran had to do was give the dog food and water. Instead, he let it starve to death.
It wasn’t the first time Corcoran was convicted of animal cruelty. The first conviction was in Grand Bank in 2012, when he was given a suspended sentence with a year’s probation. He also has numerous convictions for breaching court orders, as well as ones for assault with a weapon and assault.
Singleton recommended Corcoran be given a blended sentence — eight months behind bars, with 18 months’ probation for the animal cruelty charge, and conditional sentences totalling 45 days for other unrelated charges, including possessing stolen property from the construction company he had worked for and breaching court orders for not residing where he said he would
Corcoran, who represented himself at the sentencing hearing, apologized for what he did. He said he’d tried to get legal counselling, but that it didn’t work out. He said the case has had a big impact on his life and that’s he’s “lost everything.”
He had asked the judge to consider a conditional sentence for him to allow him to care for his family. But Walsh had little sympathy for him.
“You have a prior for doing this. How do you explain that?” Walsh said to Corcoran at the time. “This is not just a matter of, ‘I just forgot to feed the dog.’ You looked at photographs. So have I. And when I have a veterinarian with 20-plus years’ experience saying it’s the worst she’s ever seen, and she gets very emotional when she’s describing the work she had to do with this emaciated dog, like, where does that come from? Where was your head?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out, Your Honour,” Corcoran had replied. Walsh went on to say, “This, in essence, is a form of torture — by neglect, complete neglect!
And even then, you just took the corpse and stuck it in a suitcase and sealed the suitcase and left it in a unit up in Buckmaster’s Circle area and then walked out.
You left it for somebody else to find and clean up the mess.” Walsh told Corcoran that he hasn’t learned his lesson, and said he considered having him taken into custody then and there, but opted to review all the information and think it over.
“Mr. Corcoran, I can tell you, I’ve been here (serving as a judge) over five years and I’ve seen some pretty horrific stuff, and this is ranking up there (with the worst),” he said.
“How you ever let it get to this point is beyond me, absolutely beyond me. It’s inexplicable.”
Walsh then told Corcoran, “Pack your toothbrush, because I tell you there will be some straight jail time.”