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JOHNSTOWN-The man who shot his sister's four German shepherds and then burned them in his backyard after his mother first tried to kill them with rat poison has pleaded guilty to two counts of felony aggravated animal cruelty under the state's Buster Law.
Registered sex offender Edward Fletcher, 34, of Oppenheim was scheduled to have begun trial Monday but opted to plead guilty rather than risk a two to four year prison term if convicted at trial.
Under the provisions of the plea deal, Fletcher will likely be sentenced to 16 months in jail, receiving credit for the time he has been in jail since the March 18 incident.
Fletcher's mother, Jane, 72, of Little Falls, has been sentenced to two years in the Fulton County Jail after pleading guilty in June to four counts of aggravated cruelty under Buster's Law, four counts of poisoning an animal, four counts of torturing an animal and one felony count of tampering with evidence. She had turned down a plea deal.
Under Buster's Law, she could have been sentenced to two years in prison per dog and a $5,000 fine.
Jane Fletcher's history of mental illness may have contributed to her actions, Fulton County Court Judge Polly Hoye said, but it didn't absolve her of her crimes. The elderly woman will also have to undergo mental health treatment and she is prohibited from owning dogs for three years, the maximum by law.
The woman accepted full responsibility for the deaths of the dogs and has said that her son was not to blame. She claimed the family didn't have enough money to feed the four dogs in addition to her son's three children.
Her daughter maintained that her brother had shot the dogs out of mercy after discovering that his mother had given them rat poison. The tampering charge came from him pouring gasoline on the carcasses and putting them on a bonfire.
In June, Jane Fletcher's attorney had told the court that she had been found mentally incompetent by two psychiatrists but after being placed in an institution during the summer, she was declared competent and returned to Fulton County for prosecution.
According to the Fulton County Sheriff's Department, the Fletchers said they killed the dogs because they couldn't afford to feed them. Sharon Hayes, director of the Fulton County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said that an autopsy of the dogs showed their stomachs were empty at the time of their death. There were also signs of other abuse including a shattered knee and broken jaw of one of the dogs.
Police said that Jane Fletcher had tried to poison the dogs for two weeks with rat poison but when that didn't work, she and her son decided to shoot the dogs. A neighbor called police after watching Fletcher shoot the dogs after he had tied them to a fence post of his property Saturday afternoon. The witness said Fletcher then poured gasoline on the bodies and burned the four dogs which ranged from 2 to 10 years in age.
When police arrived, they found the dogs burning in a pile and called for the fire department to extinguish the fire. 9-29-06
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© 2006 North
Country Gazette
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