Puppy thrown off balcony
Miramar, FL (US)Incident Date: Sunday, Jul 31, 2005
County: Broward
Disposition: Acquitted
Case Images: 3 files available
Person of Interest: Josper Sanon
Case Updates: 3 update(s) available
Police arrested a Miramar man after they said he threw a 2-month-old black Labrador puppy off his fifth-floor balcony. Josper Sanon, 49, was upset that the puppy had urinated and defecated inside the apartment, police said. Investigators also said Sanon threw the puppy over the balcony to its death in front of his two sons.
Police said a patrolling officer learned of the crime when he spotted Sanon's son crying in the parking lot of the apartment building. When the officer asked what happened, the 16-year-old told the officer his father killed the puppy by throwing it off the balcony, police said.
The teen then showed the officer where the puppy's body was in the grass nearby, police said.
Sanon is charged with animal cruelty. He is being held on $2,500 bond.
Sanon's sons are staying with a relative while their father remains in jail
Case UpdatesOn Tuesday, Florida prosecutors dismissed the animal cruelty case against Josper Sanon, a decision that came two months after the 4th District Court of Appeal reversed his animal cruelty conviction and remanded for a new trial. In October 2006, Sanon was convicted of animal cruelty after allegedly hurling his son's black Labrador puppy, Nikita, off of a fifth-floor balcony, killing the 8-week old puppy upon impact. The problem with the conviction was that it was largely based upon the son's claim that Sanon killed the pooch, and the son did not testify at trial. Instead, a police officer testified that he was driving on the day in question when he saw a boy talking on his cell phone, crying and flailing his arms. According to the officer, when he asked the boy what had happened, the boy responded that his father had thrown his dog off of the balcony. Despite receiving a subpoena, the son did not attend his father's trial.
Santon was halfway through serving his three-year prison sentence before the 4th District concluded that the son's failure to testify was fatal to the prosecution's case. And it was fatal because it violated the Confrontation Clause as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004) and Davis v. Washington, 547 U.S. 813 (2006). In Crawford, the Court essentially found that the Confrontation Clause of the U.S. Constitution is violated when hearsay is "testimonial," admitted against a criminal defendant, and the hearsay declarant does not testify at the defendant's trial, unless (1) the declarant was unavailable for trial, and (2) the defendant was previously able to cross-examine the declarant. The Court in Crawford set forth various formulations of the term "testimonial," with the most commonly adopted one defining a "testimonial" statement as one that "was made under circumstances which would lead an objectively reasonable declarant to believe or anticipate that the statement would be available for use against an accused at a later trial."
In Davis, the Court tweaked that analysis, noted that context matters, and seemed to conclude that even statements meeting the above formulation of "testimonial" could be admissible if they were made during an "ongoing emergency." According to the 4th District, however, the son's statements were not made as part of an "ongoing emergency." Instead, the son's statements occurred 20 minutes after the incident, with the officer approaching the son rather than vice versa. And while the state claimed that the son's statements were also admissible as excited utterances, the 4th District noted that excited utterances still must satisfy the Confrontation Clause.
The 4th District thus reversed for a new trial, and, realizing that it no longer had a case, the state finally threw in the towel on Tuesday and dismissed the charges against Sanon. In my estimation, this is a very upsetting case, but a correctly decided one under the law. | Source: EvidenceProf Blog - June 26, 2008
Update posted on Jun 26, 2008 - 12:28PM |
Josper Sanon spent more than a year and a half behind bars for hurling his son's black Labrador puppy off of a fifth-story balcony.
Nikita died on impact. She was 8-weeks old.
When Broward prosecutors dismissed the case Tuesday, Sanon was halfway through his three-year prison sentence.
Sanon's then 16-year-old son, Steve, told police his father reacted in anger because the pup had messed in their condominium.
Steve Sanon's remark to a Miramar police officer, sealed Sanon's jury conviction even though the son was a no show at the October 2006 trial.
The 4th District Court of Appeal said the son's statement was inadmissible because he was not a witness at trial. In April it overturned Sanon's animal-cruelty conviction.
Sanon's wife, Marie Derisma, was "uncontrollable" and "literally shivering" when prosecutors announced the dismissal in Circuit Judge Stanton Kaplan's courtroom, Sanon's defense attorney Jason St-Fleur said Wednesday.
Sanon, 52, a former restaurant manager who had never before been in trouble with the law, was expected to be released from the Broward Main Jail at midnight, St-Fleur said.
Sanon chalked up the ordeal as "a challenge by God," St-Fleur said. | Source: Sun-Sentinel - June 26, 2008
Update posted on Jun 26, 2008 - 9:58AM |
A judge sentenced a Miramar man to three years in prison Wednesday for hurling his son's 8-week-old black Labrador puppy off a fifth-story balcony to its death.
In hopes that Josper Sanon will gain some perspective on "how helpless these little animals are," Broward Circuit Judge Stanton Kaplan also ordered that upon release from prison, Sanon perform community service at the Broward Humane Society, 15 hours a week for a year.
Last month, it took a jury only 55 minutes to convict Sanon, 50, of felony animal cruelty. The maximum penalty could have been five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
"In this country we generally hold our domestic animals in high regard," Kaplan said at Wednesday's sentencing. "Some of them become our best and most loyal friends, and that's why we have laws like this to protect these helpless animals."
Sanon was angry at his 16-year-old son because he would not clean up after the puppy messed in his condominium, said prosecutor Greg Lauer. In retribution, Sanon hurled Nikita over the balcony, Lauer said.
Defense attorney Tom O'Connell said the pup slipped over the balcony as father and son tussled over it. For the animal to land 25 feet from the building, it had to have been thrown with force, Lauer countered.
"I'm no criminal...This is stupid," Sanon said in a pre-sentencing report filed with the court.
Lauer urged the judge to impose a prison sentence. He said he was most bothered by the father's actions to punish his son by killing his dog. "He killed something that obviously his son cared about," Lauer said. "It's a really sick and sadistic form of punishment."
Kaplan also ordered that Sanon's prison sentence be followed by one year of probation and that he attend anger-management classes.
O'Connell immediately filed a notice of appeal. Kaplan will hold a hearing next week to determine whether Sanon, a French citizen who was born and raised in Haiti, is eligible for bail pending an appeal. | Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel - Nov 23, 2006
Update posted on Nov 23, 2006 - 11:59AM |
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