Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Grits for Breakfast

Criminal Law

: Grits for Breakfast

Stealing pets a felony? Must we?

Valley Democrat Eddie Lucio filed HB 435 which proposes making it a state jail felony to steal a "pet."Must we, really? Is this a big problem? Has there been a rash of pet-nappings and I wasn't informed?I can think of two incidents in my adult personal life involving allegations of "stolen pets." Both were essentially pet custody disputes, which makes me think such a law could be easily mis-applied. Pinning a felony tag on somebody - even the lowest level felony - places a scarlet letter on the offender's back potentially for life. We ought to be more cautious about making putting more and more petty crimes in that category.

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on January 06, 2009 (boomark / email).