Bill would make it easier to prosecute dog fighting in Kentucky

Dog fighting is a Class D felony in Kentucky, punishable by up to five years in prison, but police seldom catch perpetrators in the act.

The Senate Agriculture Committee on Tuesday voted 10 to 0, with one abstention, for a bill intended to make dog fighting prosecutions easier. Under Senate Bill 14, now headed to the full Senate, a felony charge could be filed against anyone who knowingly owns, possesses, keeps, breeds, trains, sells or otherwise transfers a domesticated dog for the primary purpose of fighting another domesticated dog for pleasure or profit.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Paul Hornback, said he spent the last eight months negotiating with animal-rights advocates on one side of the issue and farmers and hunters on the other. None of the groups support dog fighting, Hornback said, but some farmers have dogs that defend their livestock from predators, while some hunters use dogs to catch bears and other fierce animals, and nobody wants to go to prison.

“I personally feel like I did a pretty good job on this bill, because I didn’t make anybody happy,” said Hornback, R-Shelbyville.

Under Hornback’s bill, people who presently face misdemeanor animal cruelty charges when police find injured fighting dogs on their property instead could be hit with a felony.

As an attempt at compromise, the bill exempts a number of activities, including hunting, guarding livestock, field trials, dog training and other activities authorized by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, the American Kennel Club, the United Kennel Club “or other accredited national organizations.”

That section of the bill raised concerns among people speaking to the committee Tuesday. Alex Gaddis, an assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Jefferson County, said he would have a hard time explaining to a jury the bylaws of various private organizations so it could determine if a suspect was legally guilty of dog fighting. Allowing other groups to define dog fighting “opens a Pandora’s Box,” he said.

“This expands the authority for determining a felony to entities outside the government, and I think it’s totally unworkable,” Gaddis said.

Cynthia Criswell, an animal-rights advocate, told the senators she feared dog fighters could try to cloak their operations under a veneer of legitimacy by creating a neutral-sounding organization that authorizes their activities, as the bill allows.

“Maybe it’s a little far-fetched,” Criswell said after the hearing. “But there will always be people looking for loopholes in this sort of law.”

The Kentucky Houndsmen Association, a hunting group that objected to earlier drafts of Hornback’s bill, said the version passed Tuesday is acceptable to its members.

“You know, there’s an old saying among coon hunters: A coon dog knows the difference between being kicked and stumbled over,” said Doug Morgan, the group’s president. “And I honestly believe that there is nothing in this (bill) that will come back and kick the Kentucky Houndsmen.”

This story was originally published February 23, 2016 at 3:58 PM with the headline "Bill would make it easier to prosecute dog fighting in Kentucky."