Has anyone handled a seizure and subsequent criminal prosecution in an animal hoarding case?

Down in Granbury Texas, they did one about 10 years ago. I came in on the tail end of it. (Heh heh)

R. Kelton Conner is the County Attorney down there. He's a really nice guy. His assistant CA's sometimes check these boards. Try calling down there and seeing if Chad Bull still works there. He'll help you out if Kelton is busy. Hood County was my first job as a prosecutor. I can't say enough good things about both the CA's office and the DA's office down there. Great people.

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Originally posted by Steve14:

The crazy cat lady is basically harmless. Nuts, but harmless

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Alright, then. She can move in next to you.

I've seen the aftermath of some of these houses. Harmless they are not. It's a huge public health problem that includes from dead animals in the yard or house, rotting food, contaminated water from feces, and a stench that can absolutely permeate a neighborhood. I've known at least one house that simply had to be torn down because it couldn't be cleaned up. Not to mention, these tend to be tenants who often turn out to be near impossible to successfully evict and do thousands of dollars of damage to a landlords property.

I ended up pursuing a civil commitment and leaving any criminal prosecution alone. But harmless? Not quite.

No doubt what you say. I'd hate to have to deal with such a situation as an owner or a neighbor. But when you have the reality of 120-130 beds for 4.5 million people, you have to carefully pick and chose who gets committed. The guy who talks to space aliens who tell him to kill the President, the homeless dude who chases people around because he thinks they are trying to steal his thoughts, or the old person who cannot feed, bathe, or take care of his/her basic needs and who has no family left?

You have a whole spectrum of crazy people (for lack of a better term) from the mildly nuts to those that are a clear & present danger - but have committed no crime (yet!).

If you stick the cat lady in, you have to move somebody out.

The cat lady, in the end, does not really threaten public safety and is not a danger to anyone or themselves.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree.

When animals are starving to death on this person's property it is my business. We may not want to "lock these people up". Maybe we want to get the animals seized and rescued and put these people on probation. Get them help if they are mentally ill.

Sara-

Are you trying to seize the animals or the real property they're on? If it's the animals, I have always relied on local animal control ordinances to do that, rather than try and convert them into some sort of "property" that we then file a seizure on. I've really only ever seen it with small animals though. The one horse case I've seen the person voluntarily relinquished them the moment criminal investigation started.

Brody: There are issues going on here that I can't speak about on a public forum. My email is sara.spector@38thda.org.

Steve 14: Please remember this is a public forum. Making generalized statements implying I want to imprison mentally ill people who are not harming anybody is quite irresponsible since you do not know all the facts of my case. Most DA's are not going to post the fact scenario in their cases on a forum that has public access for obvioius reasons.