A question about animal protection laws and punishment. What is you opinion?
Last year in Berlin, a 37 year old man was jailed for 7 months without parole because he threw a cat out of his 5 story high window.
killing a vertebrate is a crime according to ยง17 of the German animal protection law, punishable with up to 3 years jail or a monetary fine
As a cat lover, I personally feel quite vindicated.
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21 Answers
Eh I think it should’ve been a year.
They should have made him eat the cat. If you kill it you should eat it. Unless it is a ant or spider.
Should have been longer.
People who willingly abuse animals should not be roaming freely.
Should have been longer… a guy in my town got 23½ months for kicking his guide dog to death… (wish he would have gotten a longer sentence too!)
@christine215 Wow.. .the kind of person who has it in him to kick an animal (who’s job it is to help him?!?!) to death will be back on our streets in less than 2 years? I hope he never has children, or pretty much any contact with anyone.
Tit for tat. The human equivalent of a five-story drop for a cat should be determined and then the man should be dropped from that height. Otherwise there is no real justice.
Castration should be the punishment!
I kind of like the old “albatross around the neck” approach.
Animal abuse is grossly underlegislated. Many who start harming animals go on to harm people. Violence against innocent creatures is much less understandable than someone getting angry at another and throwing them out of a window. Harsher sentences could deter behavior.
I agree with what many other people have said, the sentence should have been longer. Animal abuse sickens me and like @tinyfaery it’s not uncommon for people who harm animals and have no problem doing so to easily harm people.
There have been so many cases of animal abuse in the news here recently. The worst I have heard for a long time was a few weeks ago when a group of teenagers kicked and stomped on a foal until it was dead. I cried when I heard this, to imagine the pain and suffering that poor animal must have gone through before it died made me seriously feel sick. I love animals BUT you don’t have to love them to have compassion when it comes to a defenceless creature like the foal. I know so many people who aren’t big fans of animals but they would NEVER dream of hurting them. I believe the only people that can deliberately (and laugh about it like the foal killers apparently did – they were caught on a mobile phone camera by a local do walker) cause an animal suffering are either sick or evil. Or both.
I am 100% for animal protection laws, and in the US we desperately need more of them. Above that, I am completely against the meat industry, and view it as a form of animal cruelty.
The meat industry is also a form of cruelty to humans! Read the Jungle by Upton Sinclair.
Is he being punished going to jail? Yes, sorry to say it but too great a punishment.
Is he being punished going to jail? No, the tax payer is, having to feed and house him.
He should have been sentenced to community service and therapy.
His sentence should have been longer. As others have said, people who abuse animals are very rarely punished adequately. And as tiny said, those who abuse and torture animals generally go on to do the same thing to people.
How could I miss this question??
Phsyco should have been in jail longer. 7 months! Wth?
there was a 17 year old girl in NYC who just got a year in jail for putting a kitten in the oven, turning on the oven and leaving the kitten to die. the girl had broken into someone’s apt. that she knew, and the kitten belonged to the apt. owner. i think one year was not enough. and then they say the girl can’t own any pets. who is going to make sure she does not own any pets? plus the publicity probably went to her head. someone should burn her hands and show her how it feels. that story sickened me.
i can’t stand hearing these stories, because animals can’t tell us when they’re being abused, locked up, tortured, tied up, left outside, etc. when i was little i had a friend who’s parents never fed the dog real dog food – they would feed it left over pasta. the dog would be so starving it would eat the pasta. then the dog went into the grandmother’s garden and the grandmother bashed the dog’s head on the concrete as punishment. i saw that happen but i was only about 8 so i could not do anything about it.
He’ll get his just punishment eventually. When he runs out of pets he’ll start on throwing kids out of the window, and then they’ll give him at least 5 years. ~ Big time sarcasm.
People who do things like this are often sociopaths, and often end up doing far worse things.
Personally, I think he should be tossed out of the same window, but then I am one of those strange cat ladies.
@ChazMaz Therapy, definitley. But just therapy and community service? No way. This guy needs to be away from society for a while.
@johnpowell sure, kick a puppy, go to jail; step on a spider, get a slap on the back for a job well done. Any animal activist that kills harmless spiders simply out of fear or revulsion is a hypocrite. Pulled the wings off a fly lately?
ummm… don’t we kill and eat vertebrates all the time?
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