Judge Ottavio Campanella sentenced Chad M. Sills to three years of probation, a $100 fine, a $200 surcharge and payment of $554 in restitution, a court spokeswoman said Friday.
A jury that had been selected was dismissed when Sills pleaded guilty in June to one count of animal cruelty, a class A misdemeanor. He faced maximum penalties of up to a year in jail, a $1,000 fine or both.
Sills’ dog, Diesel, a 5-year-old male, was a week or two from starving to death and weighed only 39 pounds when he was seized on Jan. 26, 2014, according to Elmira City Animal Control.
Diesel subsequently returned to his ideal healthy weight of around 80 pounds and was adopted from the Elmira Animal Shelter.
Lisa Cardamone of Big Flats was among about a half-dozen people in court Friday wearing “Justice for the Innocent” T-shirts. Even though Sills didn’t get the maximum sentence, she saw a bright side.
“We were hoping it would be more severe, but my guess is, the way the judge worded it, if he was sent to jail for one year, he’d be able to come out the next day and get a domestic animal,” she said.
“But now with him being on three years’ probation, he’s not allowed to have any domestic animal, not even a bird. So, I think the judge weighed it.”
Sills said he could not care for Diesel because he had cancer, Cardamone said.
“There was no documentation that Mr. Sills had any kind of cancer,” she said. “Whether he did or didn’t, it’s no excuse for almost starving a dog to death.”
Also, the conditions that the dog was living in didn’t just happen in the past couple of weeks, she said.
Sills also had been charged with one count of failure to provide appropriate shelter, one count of failure to license the dog and one count of failure to provide rabies vaccination.
(Star Gazette - Aug 7, 2015)
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