Updated at 11 p.m. with more details from court hearing.
SALEM, MO. • The stated reason for Thursday’s court hearing was a technical matter, about whether a judge should reverse his earlier support for the mayor’s decision to euthanize a dog named Phineas, whose plight has attracted audiences far from this Ozarks town.
Attorneys, experts and even the judge discussed canine teeth in detail. Twice the courtroom was cleared of spectators while two young girls testified, both of them crying under the pressure.
Still, the day’s real intrigue was, who stole Phineas?
Last weekend, just days after subpoenas for Thursday’s hearing were sent out, the dog disappeared from the veterinary clinic where he had been housed for months. His death sentence has been on hold for more than a year while his owners challenged the mayor’s finding that Phineas was a vicious animal for biting a 7-year-old girl.
Authorities say they don’t have a clue who took the yellow Labrador retriever. They are not even sure how. There were no signs of a burglary. The dog was just gone. And in a town where strong feelings about the case are common; “Phineas for Mayor” bumper stickers have been seen; and Phineas billboards along Interstate 44 beg “Don’t let Salem, MO kill me,” the list of possible suspects is long.
“I’ve heard so many stories, it’s unreal,” said Deanna Parrett, a Salem resident who attended the hearing. “Who knows where he might be.”
The question of what happened to Phineas, while not on the official docket, repeatedly intruded into the courtroom. It seemed to undercut a hearing aimed at deciding a dog’s fate when that fate, one way or another, already seemed to have been decided by someone else.
“How’d that dog get away?” William Camm Seay, the city attorney, asked at one point.
“Someone stole him,” replied Dr. J.J. Tune, who runs the vet clinic where Phineas disappeared.
Well, Seay asked, how’d he get out?
Someone took him out through the clinic’s double doors off a side dock, Tune replied.
Did police investigate?
“They came down,” Tune said.
He was asked to elaborate.
“They came down, asked a few questions and left,” Tune said. “No fingerprints or anything.”
“There were no video cameras?” Seay continued. No security of any kind?
“We got a police station right up the street,” Tune replied.
Smiles broke out among many of the approximately 40 spectators. Most supported Phineas’ release. And they had criticism for how local police investigated the dog’s disappearance. “We’re thinking the cops were involved,” Pat Sanders said during a break. He and his wife, Amber Sanders, own the animal. They sat in the front row throughout the day’s hearing.
Police Chief Keith Steelman, also in court, but just to watch, shook his head at the suggestion.
“I think my guys went out there and did the best they could,” Steelman said.
His department has been flooded with possible leads, from locals and people from across the country following the case online. “But there’s nothing legitimate to hang our hat on,” he said.
This wasn’t the first time Phineas vanished.
The city has had custody of the dog since shortly after the June 22, 2012, biting incident. The victim, who was playing in a friend’s backyard when she was bit, was treated at a local hospital. She was not seriously injured.
At first, Phineas was lodged at the county animal shelter. But, in October 2012, someone cut a hole in the shelter’s fence and whisked the dog away. Phineas mysteriously returned days later.
Then the dog was moved to locations so secret that his owners had to make a habeus corpus filing in court to see him again. That’s when state officials stepped in and ordered the city to find a licensed home for him. In May, Phineas was sent to Tune’s clinic.
On the witness stand, Tune said he didn’t think the victim was bitten by Phineas. He pulled a plastic model of canine teeth from a white paper bag to explain. A dog like Phineas has four large canine teeth that would puncture the skin in a bite, he said. But photos of the victim’s wound didn’t show any puncture wounds.
“That doesn’t look like a dog bite. It looks like a primate,” he said.
A canine behavioral consultant from Jacksonville, Fla., agreed. James Crosby, flown in to testify for the dog’s owners, said he examined photos of Phineas’ bite and the victim’s bite mark, concluding that the shape and size of the wound did not match Phineas’ dental pattern.
“This particular dog did not inflict this particular injury,” Crosby said.
Dent County Circuit Judge Scott Bernstein listened intently. Earlier this year, he had ruled to uphold the mayor’s finding that Phineas should be euthanized. He’d held a hearing and listened to much of the same evidence. Now, he was being asked to change his mind.
Jeff Lowe, an attorney for Phineas’ owners, told the judge that his clients had been deprived of their property — in this case, Phineas — without due process. The mayor’s ruling was a mistake, Lowe said, because the mayor did not follow proper rules for evidence. The mayor believed the June 2012 incident was the third time Phineas had bitten someone. It was the first, Lowe said.
Judge Bernstein questioned Tune and Crosby at length about a dog’s teeth, about how an animal might bite down so as to leave impressions of the smaller incisors but not the larger canines. At one point, he asked Crosby a series of questions and then asked one more. Was it possible, the judge said, for a dog’s bite to be interpreted as “don’t leave, stay and play with me?” He seemed to be suggesting that perhaps the dog’s intent was not to be vicious.
Crosby said that certainly was possible.
Seay, the city attorney, complained throughout the hearing that Phineas’ owners already had a chance to address these issues at the previous hearing before the judge. It was too late now, he said.
“I’ve put up with this dog and pony show long enough,” Seay said.
The judge did not say when he would make a decision. He wondered aloud in court whether he even had the jurisdiction to reverse his earlier ruling. He also expressed his view that there were no bad people in this case.
“And I know there has been a lot of bad feelings in this,” he said.
As the hearing ended, some spectators said they believed that whether Phineas would ever be seen again depended on what the judge decided.
If he reversed his ruling, essentially giving Phineas a second chance, they expected the dog to magically reappear. It sounded a little far-fetched. They knew this. But it already had happened once before.
via www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/on-dog-s-day-in-court-questions-about-who-took/article_3b99f175-17cc-5a4d-b517-097025ea73a6.html
SALEM, MO. • The stated reason for Thursday’s court hearing was a technical matter, about whether a judge should reverse his earlier support for the mayor’s decision to euthanize a dog named Phineas, whose plight has attracted audiences far from this Ozarks town.
Attorneys, experts and even the judge discussed canine teeth in detail. Twice the courtroom was cleared of spectators while two young girls testified, both of them crying under the pressure.
Still, the day’s real intrigue was, who stole Phineas?
Last weekend, just days after subpoenas for Thursday’s hearing were sent out, the dog disappeared from the veterinary clinic where he had been housed for months. His death sentence has been on hold for more than a year while his owners challenged the mayor’s finding that Phineas was a vicious animal for biting a 7-year-old girl.
Authorities say they don’t have a clue who took the yellow Labrador retriever. They are not even sure how. There were no signs of a burglary. The dog was just gone. And in a town where strong feelings about the case are common; “Phineas for Mayor” bumper stickers have been seen; and Phineas billboards along Interstate 44 beg “Don’t let Salem, MO kill me,” the list of possible suspects is long.
“I’ve heard so many stories, it’s unreal,” said Deanna Parrett, a Salem resident who attended the hearing. “Who knows where he might be.”
The question of what happened to Phineas, while not on the official docket, repeatedly intruded into the courtroom. It seemed to undercut a hearing aimed at deciding a dog’s fate when that fate, one way or another, already seemed to have been decided by someone else.
“How’d that dog get away?” William Camm Seay, the city attorney, asked at one point.
“Someone stole him,” replied Dr. J.J. Tune, who runs the vet clinic where Phineas disappeared.
Well, Seay asked, how’d he get out?
Someone took him out through the clinic’s double doors off a side dock, Tune replied.
Did police investigate?
“They came down,” Tune said.
He was asked to elaborate.
“They came down, asked a few questions and left,” Tune said. “No fingerprints or anything.”
“There were no video cameras?” Seay continued. No security of any kind?
“We got a police station right up the street,” Tune replied.
Smiles broke out among many of the approximately 40 spectators. Most supported Phineas’ release. And they had criticism for how local police investigated the dog’s disappearance. “We’re thinking the cops were involved,” Pat Sanders said during a break. He and his wife, Amber Sanders, own the animal. They sat in the front row throughout the day’s hearing.
Police Chief Keith Steelman, also in court, but just to watch, shook his head at the suggestion.
“I think my guys went out there and did the best they could,” Steelman said.
His department has been flooded with possible leads, from locals and people from across the country following the case online. “But there’s nothing legitimate to hang our hat on,” he said.
This wasn’t the first time Phineas vanished.
The city has had custody of the dog since shortly after the June 22, 2012, biting incident. The victim, who was playing in a friend’s backyard when she was bit, was treated at a local hospital. She was not seriously injured.
At first, Phineas was lodged at the county animal shelter. But, in October 2012, someone cut a hole in the shelter’s fence and whisked the dog away. Phineas mysteriously returned days later.
Then the dog was moved to locations so secret that his owners had to make a habeus corpus filing in court to see him again. That’s when state officials stepped in and ordered the city to find a licensed home for him. In May, Phineas was sent to Tune’s clinic.
On the witness stand, Tune said he didn’t think the victim was bitten by Phineas. He pulled a plastic model of canine teeth from a white paper bag to explain. A dog like Phineas has four large canine teeth that would puncture the skin in a bite, he said. But photos of the victim’s wound didn’t show any puncture wounds.
“That doesn’t look like a dog bite. It looks like a primate,” he said.
A canine behavioral consultant from Jacksonville, Fla., agreed. James Crosby, flown in to testify for the dog’s owners, said he examined photos of Phineas’ bite and the victim’s bite mark, concluding that the shape and size of the wound did not match Phineas’ dental pattern.
“This particular dog did not inflict this particular injury,” Crosby said.
Dent County Circuit Judge Scott Bernstein listened intently. Earlier this year, he had ruled to uphold the mayor’s finding that Phineas should be euthanized. He’d held a hearing and listened to much of the same evidence. Now, he was being asked to change his mind.
Jeff Lowe, an attorney for Phineas’ owners, told the judge that his clients had been deprived of their property — in this case, Phineas — without due process. The mayor’s ruling was a mistake, Lowe said, because the mayor did not follow proper rules for evidence. The mayor believed the June 2012 incident was the third time Phineas had bitten someone. It was the first, Lowe said.
Judge Bernstein questioned Tune and Crosby at length about a dog’s teeth, about how an animal might bite down so as to leave impressions of the smaller incisors but not the larger canines. At one point, he asked Crosby a series of questions and then asked one more. Was it possible, the judge said, for a dog’s bite to be interpreted as “don’t leave, stay and play with me?” He seemed to be suggesting that perhaps the dog’s intent was not to be vicious.
Crosby said that certainly was possible.
Seay, the city attorney, complained throughout the hearing that Phineas’ owners already had a chance to address these issues at the previous hearing before the judge. It was too late now, he said.
“I’ve put up with this dog and pony show long enough,” Seay said.
The judge did not say when he would make a decision. He wondered aloud in court whether he even had the jurisdiction to reverse his earlier ruling. He also expressed his view that there were no bad people in this case.
“And I know there has been a lot of bad feelings in this,” he said.
As the hearing ended, some spectators said they believed that whether Phineas would ever be seen again depended on what the judge decided.
If he reversed his ruling, essentially giving Phineas a second chance, they expected the dog to magically reappear. It sounded a little far-fetched. They knew this. But it already had happened once before.
via www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/on-dog-s-day-in-court-questions-about-who-took/article_3b99f175-17cc-5a4d-b517-097025ea73a6.html
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