|
Alex Castro didn't like his girlfriend's dog. The 10-year-old cocker spaniel named Copper would bark and whine, neighbors told police, and the 46-year-old Milpitas man responded by kicking the dog, choking it and throwing it into the air. Late one night, a woman in his trailer park said she saw Castro carrying the dog's lifeless body by the neck. "I finally did it," Castro told another neighbor, who relayed the statement to authorities, according to court records. "I kicked him and he was yelping so loud I had to kill him, so I took my hammer and put a hole in his head." What happened to Copper has outraged pet lovers and drawn the attention of a nationwide animal-rights group. What happens to Castro may prompt a debate: Prosecutors have invoked the state's "three strikes, you're out" law because Castro has prior convictions for violent crimes. He now faces a possible sentence of 25 years to life in prison. The sometime construction worker is scheduled to appear in court today on a felony charge of animal cruelty on suspicion of killing the dog July 31. "People in the community are clearly going to have an emotional response to this kind of case," said Castro's attorney, deputy public defender Ross McMahon. "The real question, however, is: Do we as a society feel that this alleged conduct merits a life sentence?" A judge will decide the penalty if Castro is convicted. But prosecutors in the Santa Clara County district attorney's office said the crime and Castro's prior record meet their criteria for seeking a "three strikes" sentence. Castro's record includes felony convictions, in separate cases, for assault with a deadly weapon and battery resulting in serious injury. He served three years in prison and a series of shorter stints for six parole violations from 1999 to 2004. Court records detailing those cases were not immediately available. But Castro's girlfriend, Joanie Gonzalez, said he told her one case stemmed from a bar brawl in which he used a metal pipe to crack the skull of a man fighting with Castro's father. The other supposedly occurred when Castro severely choked a man who made unwelcome comments to a former girlfriend. Gonzalez, 47, said she's horrified by what happened to Copper, the dog she raised since it was a puppy. Still, she said, she isn't sure Castro should spend the rest of his life behind bars. "I loved my dog like my kids," she said, "but that's a long time." Gonzalez said she met Castro in 2005 and thought he was turning his life around. But after her neighbors found the dog's body and called police, Gonzalez said she told Castro she didn't want anything more to do with him. "It's hard because I cared about him," she added. "We had planned to spend our life together." A local animal-welfare official, without endorsing a specific penalty, said the dog's death should be treated as a serious crime. "It's been clearly documented that with this kind of thing, there's a very strong correlation with future or current violence against people," said Jon Cicirelli, deputy director for San Jose's Animal Care & Services agency, which works under contract for the city of Milpitas and helped police investigate the case. Gonzalez declined to say if Castro was abusive to her, but police said she told them he was verbally abusive and that she had "physical confrontations" with him last year. The case first drew attention when the weekly Milpitas Post published a story about the dog's death. The activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals posted a summary on its Web site and urged readers to contact District Attorney Dolores Carr. "This strikes me as one of the more cowardly attacks that I've read about," said Martin Mersereau, a PETA spokesman. "We're talking about an elderly, defenseless animal who had his head bashed in." Though prosecutors received e-mails from people who saw the PETA posting, Assistant District Attorney David Tomkins said that didn't affect their decision. As with every "three strikes" case filed by his office, Tomkins said a committee of senior prosecutors reviewed Castro's file. He said the decision to charge Castro with a felony, which made him eligible for a "three strikes" sentence because of his record, was consistent with similar cases of animal abuse. The committee looked for any extenuating circumstances that would justify dropping one or both "strikes," Tomkins said. "We decided there wasn't." Prosecutors can revise the charges against Castro if they get new information, Tomkins noted. "Perhaps there's a side of him that we're not aware of, some type of mitigating circumstances that the defense will make us aware of, and if they do we'll certainly consider that." Castro is being held in lieu of $950,000 bail in the Santa Clara County Jail. Edited: Oct 19 2007 at 8:58 am
Back
|
