Just A Thought: Woman deserves kitten treatment
I guess everyone has heard about the Ohio woman who was sentenced to spend the night in a Lake Metropark after being convicted of second-degree misdemeanor animal abandonment.
If you haven’t, here it is in a nutshell: Michelle Murray, 25, a Painesville Township resident, admitting to dumping 35 kittens in two Lake Metroparks in September. In an unusual sentencing on Nov. 17, the judge sentenced her to 30 days ? 14 days in jail and 15 under house arrest, and ordered her to spend one night in a metropark alone, with no food or shelter.
The judge, Michael Cicconetti, said he wanted to teach Ms. Murray a lesson about how it would feel to be abandoned in a dark, cold area and be surrounded by scary unfamiliar sounds. In other words, let the punishment fit the crime.
Some people argue, mostly Murray’s lawyer, that this is too much. Her attorney, James D. Falvey, argued that since the media has publicized her case, and everyone knows what she has done, this should be a good enough punishment.
Well, I don’t think so. Of course everyone is going to know what you did when you get caught. To me, that’s part of the punishment. In all reality, she probably didn’t learn anything anyway. Murray once rescued and sheltered stray cats. If that doesn’t teach you that abandoning animals is wrong, nothing will.
Her attorney also wanted all of Murray’s time to be reduced to house arrest because “the coverage has negatively affected Murray’s family.”
Anytime a family member does something embarrassing, it seems to spill over to the rest of the family who didn’t do anything wrong.
I’m sure that was on Ms. Murray’s mind when she committed this crime though, how embarrassed her family would be if she got caught abandoning these kittens to fend for themselves. In the end, she went ahead and did it anyway. Since she decided to go ahead and risk her family’s embarrassment, why should the law let her off due to family embarrassment now?
Judge Cicconetti wasn’t too harsh. Instead of having her spend all night, which was the original sentence, she only spent from 7 p.m. until 10:30 p.m. Ms. Murray was back in her nice warm bed by 11 p.m.
That’s not even enough time to get really cold, hungry or scared. I wish I could say the same for the kittens she abandoned because nine of those died. And unlike the kittens, she knew the police were standing by and wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
Judge Cicconetti has handed down other unusual sentences. He sentenced a man to stand on the street corner next to a 350-pound pig with a sign that read “This is not a police officer” because the man hollered “pigs” at police officers. An 18-year-old, who stole porn from an adult bookstore, was ordered to sit outside the shop blindfolded holding a sign that read “See No Evil.”
Every day I see people speeding through school zones. Thanks to one of Judge Cicconetti’s unusual sentences, I think I have a solution. If the person has other speeding offenses and then gets caught speeding through school zones, they should be sentenced to be a crossing guard for a day at that school.
Look at it this way, the person obviously has no remorse for their speeding ways because here they are doing it again and now they have decided that a child’s life is not even worth slowing down for.
This solution has a twofold effect. The punishment is a stronger deterrent than just the money spent on the ticket plus court costs, and the schools really need the extra help.
Lisa Chapman is a reporter for the Standard. She can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].