The citations — five Class I misdemeanors, with punishment ranging from one to 45 days each — were issued Thursday morning to Marsha Williams, former executive director of the Guilford County Animal Shelter.
Sheriff BJ Barnes said he had asked Guilford County District Attorney Doug Henderson to pass the charges on to Davidson County, where Williams is facing felony animal cruelty charges in a separate investigation.
 |
| N.C. first lady Ann McCrory attends a press conference on the Guilford County Animal Shelter with Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes (left) and Guilford County Commissioner Hank Henning on Thursday. Photo: Andrew Krech/News & Record |
The sheriff announced the charges at a press conference Thursday afternoon, flanked by Hank Henning, chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, and N.C. first lady Ann McCrory.
The investigation of the shelter, launched in July by the sheriff in conjunction with the DA’s office, dug into allegations of animal cruelty, potential drug violations and financial misappropriation at the shelter.
A similar investigation in Davidson County resulted in felony charges against Williams and two other former employees of the United Animal Coalition, which managed the animal shelter there and in Guilford County.
Howard Neumann, chief assistant district attorney for Guilford County, said last week there wasn’t enough evidence to bring charges against Williams on the cruelty charges.
The financial allegations are still being investigated, he said.
Most of the cases brought before him involved basic disagreements about how long a suffering animal should be kept alive, Neumann said at the time. Those decisions were based on overall shelter policies, making it difficult to pin responsibility on one person.
“You need some type of malicious act,” he said last week. “If we had video of people kicking dogs, that would be a whole different story, but all of these complaints hinged on disagreement as to whether a dog should be euthanized right now or kept alive for some period of time. They certainly did nothing to worsen the condition of the animal.”
Officials in Guilford County were stunned by the decision.
Henning said the board had thought the district attorney would, at a minimum, find enough evidence to file misdemeanor charges, given the dozens of examples of animal cruelty uncovered at the shelter by the state Department of Agriculture.
Barnes said Thursday it was clear that responsibility for conditions at the shelter lies with Williams, as she oversaw the facility and signed off an all decisions there.
“Marsha Williams, as the manager, was in complete control,” he said. “There was no decision made, live or die, without her being involved in the process.”
McCrory, an animal rights advocate, said she’d requested to meet with Barnes to discuss the charges and show support for the case.
 |
| Marsha Williams has operated the Guilford County Animal Shelter since 2001. She received a salary of $92,107 in 2013, according to tax documents. |
“This went beyond anything I’ve ever heard of in my life,” she said. “It’s basically torture. It’s beyond me that the Davidson County district attorney is going to prosecute. If that person has enough to charge and make a case ... why don’t we have that in Guilford County?”
The sheriff’s office delivered a letter to the district attorney Thursday morning explaining the misdemeanor charges and formally requesting that the case be passed to Davidson.
It makes sense to keep the cases together because they involve the same defendant, Barnes said.
Transferring the case also erases questions of a conflict of interest among officials in Guilford County. Animal activists had claimed that Barnes couldn’t be impartial in the investigation due to his ties to the United Animal Coalition, which took over the county shelter in 1998 largely at his request.
Henderson also has working relationships with several UAC board members, including a District Court judge and a High Point prosecutor, Barnes said.
“I have heard citizens complain that the decision not to prosecute is a result of your and my relationship with the UAC board members,” Barnes wrote to Henderson. “For these reasons and the fact that your office has, in its discretion, declined to prosecute these cases in Guilford County, I am requesting that you confer with the Davidson County District Attorney.”
The Guilford County District Attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment, and officials in Davidson County declined to comment beyond saying that the decision whether to transfer the case lies solely with Henderson.
The request is an unusual move, but not an unprecedented one, according to the sheriff.
“In my opinion, the law was broken here,” he said. “This is the right thing to do, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
(Greensboro News & Record - Nov 12, 2015)
Earlier:
No comments:
Post a Comment