Erie County Judge Michael F. Pietruszka denied her attorney’s last-ditch attempt to put off the start of her sentence until the judge rules on her appeal, probably sometime early next year.
Pietruszka rejected defense attorney Thomas J. Eoannou’s motion for a stay of the jail term after Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Texido argued against it, citing public outrage over the lengthy legal battle.
ANIMAL ABUSER: BETH LYNN HOSKINS' TIME HAS RUN OUT
The prosecutor said Hoskins wouldn’t have been going to jail if she had complied with the conditions of the probation sentence she received last year after Aurora Town Justice Douglas W. Marky convicted her of animal cruelty following a long trial.
“Instead she went out and made a music video vowing that she won’t back down,” Texido said.
He was referring to the video she made last August and posted on YouTube of her singing the Tom Petty tune, “I Won’t Back Down,” on stage at the North Park Theatre, which Eoannou owns.
The prosecutor said the public outrage over her “thumbing her nose at the legal system” was justified.
“Today is the day it has to stop,” he told the judge. “Fifty-two misdemeanors demands a jail sentence, not a stay.”
Pietruszka said Hoskins had admitted violating the probation conditions when she explained to Marky last week why the violations occurred.
Hoskins cited her father’s medical problems, a break-in that traumatized her mother at her Amherst home, her mother’s arrest for a scuffle with a home-care worker, and the need to send her mother to a Florida facility for her stress, all in October.
Besides failing to file a monthly report with her probation officer, Hoskins also left a dead horse in its stall for 2½ weeks before burying it, Texido said.
Pietruszka also found that the 90-day jail sentence was not unduly harsh, since Hoskins had faced a maximum jail sentence of two years for 52 misdemeanors.
Hoskins, 47, whose family built a fortune through the Curtis Screw machining business that they recently sold, declined to comment as she left the courtroom with her 10-year-old daughter. She also did not comment when she turned herself in – an hour past the time the judge ordered her to appear – at the Erie County Holding Center in downtown Buffalo for processing before beginning her sentence at the Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden.
Eoannou described Hoskins as prepared for the possibility that she would have to start serving her sentence Friday. “She is tough,” he said.
He added that she probably would be released in 60 days.
In the meantime, the defense attorney said he will continue to pursue his appeal of the conviction, which Pietruszka will hear at 2 p.m. Jan. 13. Eoannou said Hoskins probably will be out of jail by the time the appeal is decided.
District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III welcomed the judge’s decision to deny the request for a stay of the sentence.
He said Hoskins was given many chances in the case, noting that prosecutors had offered her a chance in 2012 to plead guilty to two misdemeanors. Instead, she went to trial and was convicted of 52 misdemeanors.
Then she was placed on probation but ended up violating it, resulting in the jail sentence, which Marky imposed on Tuesday and ordered her to start serving on Friday.
Sedita also cited Hoskins’ music video. “You can’t keep thumbing your nose at the judiciary and get away with it,” he said.
The district attorney said Eoannou’s comparison of his client to civil rights champion Rosa Parks before Marky sentenced Hoskins to jail was “incredibly offensive.”
“There’s no comparison between Beth Hoskins and Rosa Parks,” Sedita said.
At the time, Eoannou had noted that both Hoskins and Rosa Parks refused to back down.
Assistant District Attorney Michael Drmacich, who prosecuted the case, welcomed the start of Hoskins’ jail sentence, saying it was a long time coming.
He said Marky “didn’t buy her excuses” for violating probation, “and so she’s going to jail.”
Barbara Carr, executive director of the SPCA Serving Erie County, who was in the courtroom, said she was glad the case was over, because it consumed a lot of the agency’s time, efforts and money as the SPCA looked after the horses seized from Hoskins’ farm after the March 18, 2010, raid.
She estimated that the SPCA has been reimbursed $600,000 to $700,000 for its expenses arising from the case.
Hoskins’ herd of horses once numbered 73. There are now 67 horses, including several the SPCA returned to her last May 31 under a civil court settlement.
All 67 horses and the farm were placed this week in a trusteeship, approved by State Supreme Court Justice Joseph R. Glownia in the civil case.
Two friends of Hoskins – Jean R. Knox, widow of Seymour H. Knox III, and Clarence horse farm owner Hans J. Mobius – were put in charge of her farm.
Glownia has ordered the trustees to make sure that 32 of the horses are sold or transferred by Jan. 31, meaning that Hoskins will be allowed to keep the remaining 35 horses.
The two trustees must report to Glownia every two weeks on their progress on the sale or transfer of the 32 horses.
Glownia, who had ordered Hoskins at the end of May to sell or transfer the 32 horses by the end of October, said Monday that as a result of the trusteeship, she was no longer considered to be in contempt of that order.
(Buffalo News - Dec 12, 2014)
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