Animal welfare bill still in works
Members continue to tinker with some parts of it
The Anne Arundel County Council and county executive’s office continue to debate what kind of evidence should be necessary to sentence an animal to death.
On Tuesday, the council deliberated on legislation that would amend aspects of a 2017 bill, Lilo’s Law, and would modify a set of designations for aggressive animals, the most serious of which is tantamount to a death sentence. As lawmakers worked to improve the bill, they faced difficulty determining what type of proof a resident should be required to provide for an animal to be deemed vicious and sent to death row.
The original law, named for a Pasadena terrier who was mauled to death by a neighbor’s pit bull, classifies animals as potentially dangerous, dangerous and vicious. Some animal welfare advocates have long believed that it’s too easy to designate an animal as vicious. Debate over the law reached its zenith in January 2021 when a Millersville resident, Daniel Stinchcomb, accused his neighbor’s dogs, Odin and Lucy, of killing his cat Big Boy. He claimed to have seen the attack but soon left town and never appeared in any court proceedings around the case. He was also the only eyewitness to come forward at the time.
Odin and Lucy were detained at Anne Arundel County Animal Care and Control for a year before Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Pamela Alban determined there was not enough evidence to deem the dogs vicious. Alban remanded the case back to the Board of Appeals due to lack of substantiating evidence and the dogs were eventually returned to their owner, Nola Lowman. The case drew the ire of local animal welfare advocates and even caught the attention of national figures including “Clueless” star Alicia Silverstone, who posted on social media about the situation.
County animal welfare groups, including the Animal Welfare Council, have been pushing for the law to be changed since then, but the challenge is determining what constitutes adequate proof.
The original law stated an animal would be deemed vicious if it “kills or inflicts severe injury to a person or domesticated animal.” Once the animal is deemed vicious it can no longer be kept as a pet, under the law, and animal control will be required to euthanize it. However, the legislation does not spell
out what proof is required for the agency to make the vicious designation. Instead, it is left to the agency.
The new bill, which was sponsored by County Executive Steuart Pittman by way of the council chair, includes language stating the vicious label may only be rendered if there is eyewitness testimony or authenticated digital evidence of events supporting the designation.
“What this language in this bill is trying to prevent is a situation where you deem a dog as vicious and the county euthanizes it based solely on hearsay evidence,” said Ethan Hunt, Pittman’s director of government affairs. “The witness does not have to see the attack; they just have to observe events or circumstances that indicate that there was an attack.”
Members of the county’s Animal Welfare Council and Animal Matters Commission testified that that was too high a bar to reach given the nature of animal attacks.
Jennifer Brienza from the Animal Matters Commission, a county group that hears appeals of citations issued by animal control, said she was “concerned that keeping the bill the way it is would marginalize some non-verbal victims and, potentially, disabled citizens.”
Those kinds of issues led council member Shannon Leadbetter, a Crofton Republican, to sponsor an amendment eliminating the eyewitness/digital evidence requirement.
“I’ve heard lots of compelling evidence that oftentimes there is no eyewitness that is verbal,” Leadbetter said. “The eyewitness could be a child and it could be a traumatic situation if you require that child to testify.”
She also argued that the provision in the new bill that states that the agency has to find the animal committed the act “beyond a reasonable doubt,” which is the highest burden of proof required in criminal law, was enough. However, the county executive’s team countered that what that evidence would be, would be too vague if Leadbetter’s amendment were to pass.
“We feel very strongly that having some sort of in-person or recorded statement is important,” Hunt said. “The owner of a dog who is accused of being a vicious dog or committing an attack, if the dog is euthanized, they’re being deprived of their property under Maryland law, and they should have the opportunity to cross-examine or ask questions of the person making the allegations.”
Six of the seven council members voted in favor of the amendment stripping the eyewitness/digital evidence requirement. Only Nathan Volke, a Pasadena Republican, voted against the amendment, defending the county executive team’s choice of placing that language in the bill.
“There are reasonable inferences that a reasonable trier of fact can draw from the evidence that is presented including, ‘I was an eyewitness to the injury on the child,’ [if not the attack itself ],” Volke said.
Leadbetter and others said they’d be willing to come back next meeting and work on new language around the kind of evidence required to ensure the legislation strikes the right balance and is clear to whomever may be interpreting the law in the future.
“It’s clearly not clear,” said Council member Allison Pickard, a Glen Burnie Democrat.
The council will revisit the bill at its next meeting on March 4.