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New Animal Cruelty Law Raises Charges To Felony In North Carolina

By Richard Saunders, The Raleigh Telegram

Monday, June 28, 2010

RALEIGH - After being signed by Governor Beverly Perdue, a new animal cruelty law that increase punishments for killing animals will go into effect in North Carolina on December 1st of this year.

The new law will raise the criminal penalties for animal cruelty as it bumps up the charge from a misdemeanor to a class H felony, which could carry a penalty of up to ten years in jail.

“If any person shall maliciously torture, mutilate, maim, cruelly beat, disfigure, poison, or kill, or cause or procure to be tortured, mutilated, maimed, cruelly beaten, disfigured, poisoned, or killed, any animal, every such offender shall for every such offense be guilty of a Class I Class H felony,” says the recently passed bill.

Called “Susie’s Law” after Susie, a dog in North Carolina was set on fire and left to die in Greensboro (the dog later recovered), the law makes it a felony to also let an animal starve or die of thirst through neglect.

“If any person shall maliciously kill, or cause or procure to be killed, any animal by intentional deprivation of necessary sustenance, that person shall be guilty of a Class H felony,” says the wording of the bill.

Although the bill does not apply to the killing of game or farm animals, it could be used to prosecute anyone who shoots or kills stray domestic animals or non-game animals.

The penalty in those cases would be increased from a class A1 misdemeanor to the Class H felony.

Last year, a NC State Trooper was fired after being arrested for misdmeanor animal cruelty after shooting and killing a neighbor’s kitten that was coming onto his property.

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