Negligent owners target of proposal

• By MARK BALLARD
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: May 25, 2009

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Ever since that morning in the emergency room when Shannon McDaniel saw her father watch his mother, gnawed beyond recognition, cling to life after being attacked by pit bulls, she vowed to make the owners of all vicious dogs take responsibility for their animals.

“It brings tears to my eyes every time I think of it,” said McDaniel, of Livingston. “At some point, you have to have some responsibility. You have to stand for what you did.”

The first step of McDaniel’s journey is scheduled to begin Wednesday when the Louisiana House Committee on Administration of Criminal Justice takes up House Bill 155, legislation that would allow prosecutors to charge dog owners with negligent homicide – a crime that carries a sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.

Her 83-year-old grandmother, Luna McDaniel, of Ville Platte, was mauled by three pit bull terriers during her morning walk on Aug. 26, 2008. City worker Theo Doucet told police he did not know how his dogs escaped their shed. McDaniel died from her injuries and Doucet was charged with negligent homicide.

Doucet goes on trial June 4, according to court records at the 13th Judicial District in Ville Platte. Neither District Attorney Trent Brignac nor Doucet’s lawyer, Kelly Tate, responded to two phone requests each.

Getting convictions of dog owners currently is difficult because of the way law is written in Louisiana and most other states, said Tony Clayton of Port Allen.

Clayton was the prosecuting attorney before a Pointe Coupee grand jury that on May 8 declined to indict the owner of three boxers that killed a four-year-old in the yard of his Morganza home. Grand jurors heard from six witnesses during a daylong session before deciding that the incident did not rise to the level of a grossly negligent act.

Clayton said the dogs were let out of their pens into their fenced yard while a caretaker cleaned the kennel. The dogs slipped under a barbed-wire enclosure and attacked the toddler.

“I mean, letting your dogs out in your yard. Is that a crime? Or is that a mistake?” Clayton asked. “I hope they’re careful in drafting this kind of legislation. You don’t want to put people in jail for a mistake.”

Over the past five weeks, both the West Baton Rouge Parish Council and the Pointe Coupee Police Jury discussed ways to make their parish ordinances more stringent after the Morganza child was killed. Both governmental bodies sought to find ways to charge owners with felonies for failing to control their dogs.

If approved by both chambers of the Louisiana Legislature and signed into law by the governor, HB155, sponsored by state Rep. Rickey Hardy, D-Lafayette, would create the Luna McDaniel Act. The legislation would add to the negligent homicide laws criminal responsibility of the “owners of dangerous dogs who fail to properly confine or restrain them.” HB155 also would redefine “negligent injuring” to include dog attacks and expose the offending animal’s owner to a sentence of up to six months in jail and a $500 fine.

Hilton Cole, director of the East Baton Rouge Parish Animal Control Center, said he has advocated for years a way to ease prosecution of dog owners who fail to adequately supervise their animals. Such prosecutions could help shake pet owners into accepting the responsibility that comes with having animals.

Cole said the problem of dog attacks grows each day, largely because more and more pet owners, knowingly or not, let their animals run the streets without restraint. “It happens every day in our parish. That someone has not been killed yet is pure unadulterated luck,” he said.