So many broken rules I can't decide how to proceed

W

WilliamWonka

New Member
Jurisdiction
Alabama
I came home and found 2 dogs inside of my attached garage laying on top of my dogs body. the dogs would not let me have my dogs body. So I shot the two dogs. The cops came and omitted the evidence of my dogs body from the report and framed me for animal cruelty after taking me away on a failure to appear traffic ticket and then charging me with the animal cruelty along with the things they collected from invading my home after they removed me from the scene. They never took a statement from me, only asking about my guns. They stole my guns and when they could not find any major criminal evidence they also took my kid in ordr to make it more difficult for me to begin to defend myself. A judge later issuing a search warrant in an attempt to make the robbery legal. The warrant reads like an incident report , resembling nothing like probability. then the judge sealed it so that nobody else could see it. I declared in court that I intended to defend myself, unfortunately the scumbag magistrate stated that there would be one more day to file for a court appointed attorney and my wife was present to hear this and demanded that i get a appointed attorney and after arguing a while I went down and filed my application for the appointed attorney and they quickly granted me one. I eventually fired him and have learned much law but am not sure how to proceed now!? Any advice would be much appreciated. This is small town hell. Now learning that they could not have proceeded on information alone, until I requested the appointed attorney. Also their pleadings only state that I shot a dog as it ran away from my property.
 
Your dog was already dead when you got to the garage. Shooting the other dogs at that point would do nothing for your dog. At that point, the best thing to would have been to call animal control and let them remove the dogs. You could have then later filed the complaint with the cops about the attack on your dogs and your guns would not have ever been an issue. But by shooting them when, at least as far as I can tell from your write up, there was no longer any real threat to anyone, you may well have violated the law and in any event you put the guns into the picture which makes the whole incident become much more serious.

You'll have trouble getting whatever evidence the cops got from the search excluded as evidence (if they found anything incriminating at all) since the cops had a warrant. You'll likely have to wait until after any trial is held on the charges against you to appeal the judge's decision on issuing the warrant along with any other appealable issues you may have. That assumes you get convicted. If you don't get convicted there is no appeal to be done because the appeal wouldn't change the outcome in any way.

The public defender is a lawyer — went to law school, got a law degree, and passed the bar exam like every other lawyer. The public defender may also have some significant experience representing defendants in your county, which gives the lawyer a good feel for how judges and juries are likely to react to the various aspects of the case. I'm going to guess that you don't have a law degree and don't have experience handling criminal matters in court. It's more complex than you may realize. There are things that might help your case that you may not spot or you may do things that hurt your case because you don't know enough to spot the pitfalls. You are better off in pretty much every circumstance getting a PD rather than representing yourself when you can't afford your own private attorney. Bear this in mind, too. If the lawyer does an incompetent job representing you, that gives you an issue to raise on appeal to get the conviction set aside and get a new trial with a different lawyer. If you do a poor job representing yourself, that is on you and there is no appeal available to fix your own mistakes.

One other thing to consider. If you are convicted on shooting the dogs that might result in the loss of your right to have guns. That will depend on how the statute for that offense is written. You might also find your homeowner's insurance premiums go up, too.

I realize that what I'm telling you is likely not what you want to hear. But it does no good to you for me to tell you what you want to hear if what you want to hear isn't going to help you. I've been a lawyer for about 25 years and have seen a number of instances where people handle their cases pro se (represent themselves) when the other side has a lawyer, both in criminal and civil cases. In the vast majority of those cases it didn't go particularly for the pro se party.

Whatever you decide to do, I truly wish you the best of luck in getting a favorable outcome.
 
WilliamWonka said:
I came home and found 2 dogs inside of my attached garage laying on top of my dogs body. the dogs would not let me have my dogs body. So I shot the two dogs. The cops came and omitted the evidence of my dogs body from the report and framed me for animal cruelty
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How? I understand your being upset and angry at your dog's death (and, although implied, it's not necessarily clear that the two other dogs killed it), but what was accomplished by shooting (killing?) them? How is that not cruel?
WilliamWonka said:
They stole my guns and when they could not find any major criminal evidence they also took my kid
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Were your guns properly secured?
 
T
stealthy1 said:
How? I understand your being upset and angry at your dog's death (and, although implied, it's not necessarily clear that the two other dogs killed it), but what was accomplished by shooting (killing?) them? How is that not cruel?

Were your guns properly secured?
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stealthy1 said:
The dogs were almost inside of my home and my kids were inside. The 2 dogs did not run away when I opened the door as most dogs would have. Instead the dogs remained in place and upon trying to retreive my dog to see if he could be revived ,the dogs acted as they were going to attack me. I could not risk the dogs getting inside of my home. My guns were on top of my cabinets where nobody in my house but I could reach them.
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You really need to stop talking about your case to anyone but your attorney. Yes, that means stop posting about it on public internet forums.
 
WilliamWonka said:
Also their pleadings only state that I shot a dog as it ran away from my property.
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All criminal defendants have the RIGHT to remain silent, an attorney to represent their interests if he/she is unable to afford one.

I suggest you graciously accept the taxpayer funded attorney, stop blabbing about your unfortunate, foolish choices, ie... SHOOTING TWO CANINES, you alleged to have MURDERED your canine, etc!!!!

The more a defendant blabs, the deeper the hole he/she digs becomes. The deeper the hole, the bigger the problem.

Most sane citizens would have called 911, rather than discharging a firearm within the city limits. Had the dogs killed a toddler, sanity says call 911 and retreat to safer surroundings until the police respond.

Your hole gets deeper the more you yap. Stop blabbing all over the interwebz, speak only to your lawyer about these tragic events.

Keep yapping, only ensures you'll end up doing time for all that crime!!!!
 
WilliamWonka said:
I came home and found 2 dogs inside of my attached garage laying on top of my dogs body. the dogs would not let me have my dogs body. So I shot the two dogs.
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Did you call animal control before doing this?


WilliamWonka said:
The cops . . . framed me for animal cruelty
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They "framed" you? What does that mean? I assume that what the cops actually did was arrest you on these charges. "Framed" implies that they manufactured evidence. I'm assuming that you were charged with violating either section 13A-11-14 or 13A-11-14.1 of the Code of Alabama, and it would be hard to argue that you didn't violate one of these statutes unless the dogs were actively threatening you.


WilliamWonka said:
they collected from invading my home after they removed me from the scene. They never took a statement from me, only asking about my guns. They stole my guns
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Sigh....


WilliamWonka said:
I declared in court that I intended to defend myself, . . . but am not sure how to proceed now!
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Mmm-hmmm.

Get yourself a lawyer ASAP.
 
WilliamWonka said:
I was arrested for failure to appear on a traffic citation and hand to post bond for animal cruelty.
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Think about EVERYTHING you did.

Think about ALL of the things you COULD have done.

An arrest means little in the long run, unless you start blabbing, rather than choosing to protect yourself by employing your right to REMAIN SILENT.

Many arrestees would NEVER get CONVICTED, had they chosen to exercise two of our many rights: THE RIGHT AGAINST SELF INCRIMINATION, REMAINING SILECT (as in not making any statements to police or prosecutors, even family and friend).

Another often forgotten choice is our God given RIGHT to exercise restraint.

Another right is our right to a taxpayer funded defense attorney, should our finances be unable to fund one.

Think about everything you did or didn't do on that fateful day. Defending a human life offers us a myriad of choices over defending the life of a canine, feline, bovine, or even a beautiful, little porcine.
 
WilliamWonka said:
I was arrested for failure to appear on a traffic citation and hand to post bond for animal cruelty.
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Presumably, you actually DID fail to appear on the traffic citation, and what you describe with the two dogs appears to be animal cruelty. Not sure why you believe that you were framed for anything...
 

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