Cat killers get off light
Protesters howl over two torturers' sentences
By PHILIP LEE-SHANOK, Toronto Sun
Two men who skinned a cat alive were allowed to go free yesterday, drawing cries for public justice outside Old City Hall courthouse.
Anthony Ryan Wennekers, 25, was sentenced to 10 1/2 months, which he has already served in custody. Jesse Champlain Power, 22, was given 90 days in jail to be served on weekends.
Both men had pleaded guilty to mischief and cruelty to animals.
A third man, known only as "Matt," remains at large.
About 100 animal activists, many with their pets, greeted Judge Edward Ormston's ruling with cries of "Shame! Shame!" and there was some talk of public punishment for the two men.
Ormston acknowledged his first instinct was to jail the pair for the maximum 30-month sentence requested by the Crown.
"As a person who has shared his life with cats for 30 years, this was very difficult for me," the judge said. "I needed to distance myself and use law and logic, not emotion."
Ormston said he repeatedly viewed a 17-minute videotape that showed Power, Wennekers and Matt hack and slash at a white tabby cat, hanging by its neck from a cord.
The skinned and headless carcass of the cat was later found in a fridge by police officers.
In the end, Ormston ruled that Power and Wennekers didn't intend to torture the cat to death, but to kill and eat it.
"If torture had been their motive it would have been done differently and longer," he said, adding it was videotaped by Power in a way similar to an anti-meat art project in which the man had killed, cleaned and eaten a chicken.
"(Power) is a young man who made a mistake which ended in the cruel death of a cat," said Ormston. "Although many vocal opponents may see him as the devil incarnate, there are worse ways that this cat could have died."
THREATENING LETTERS
Ormston said threatening letters had been sent to both Wennekers and Power and their families.
Court security officers escorted Wennekers to the courthouse exit and he walked out a free man. Wearing a sweater and slacks thrown over his orange prison jumpsuit, Wennekers refused to say whether he was headed home to Alberta.
"I'm not going to tell you where I'm going. You can publish what you want," he said.
Power left court with his father, William J. Power, and will be under house arrest at his aunt's home in Toronto when not serving his 90 days of weekend jail time.
"This sentence doesn't inconvenience him at all. Power should serve the same jail time as Wennekers. He was the ringleader," said Amy White of the Toronto Humane Society. "It was his plan and the others followed it."
Crown Robin Flumerfelt said his office is reviewing the sentence and considering an appeal.
