Appearing out of custody at an arraignment hearing earlier this month, Marie Sage, 43, agreed to a deferred judgment to a charge of aggravated animal cruelty after she fatally shot a neighbor\u2019s dog three times with a rifle in February.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t believe a jail sentence is appropriate,\u201d argued public defender Amy R. Smith.<\/p>\n
Smith claimed the dog entered her client\u2019s property and acted aggressively toward her pet, and that Sage made a poor split-second decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a moral transgression that requires moral retribution,\u201d countered Assistant District Attorney Sean Murray.<\/p>\n
Requesting a five-day jail sentence, Murray claimed the dog was killed along County Road 22.9 simply because it was barking. Murray argued that the defendant\u2019s actions were unnecessary.<\/p>\n
District Court Judge Todd Plewe agreed, stating that a jail sentence would serve as an appropriate deterrent. Plewe added that a jail sentence would send a message to the community that a resident can\u2019t shoot their neighbor\u2019s pet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe defendant has given no reasonable explanation for her decision,\u201d said Plewe, sentencing Sage to two days in jail followed by three days of house arrest.<\/p>\n
After her release, Sage will be placed on 24 months of unsupervised probation. She was also ordered to perform 100 hours of community service. Fines and court costs totaled $433.50.<\/p>\n
Sage was allowed to report to the Montezuma County jail on June 29.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Appearing out of custody at an arraignment hearing earlier this month, Marie Sage, 43, agreed to a deferred judgment to a charge of aggravated animal cruelty after she fatally shot a neighbor\u2019s dog three times with a rifle in February. \u201cI don\u2019t believe a jail sentence is appropriate,\u201d argued public defender Amy R. Smith. Smith […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[382,21,533],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-111586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-animal","tag-cortez","tag-prison"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111586"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=111586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}