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- SAN DIEGO (APBnews.com)
- A San Diego County jury has convicted a man of molesting three sheep,
two of them fatally, in an open-air pen last summer.
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- James Donald Ray, 39, was found guilty Monday of felony
animal cruelty and misdemeanor animal sexual assault after a weeklong trial,
prosecutors said. The brown-haired, blue-eyed man broke down repeatedly
while testifying about his predilection for animals, also known as zoophilism
or bestiality.
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- "It was always a deep, dark secret that he had,"
public defender Deborah Kirkwood told APBnews.com today. "He really
wants help. He's begging for help now that it's out in the open. He knows
what he did was wrong."
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- Ray, a single San Diego County man who has no children,
is scheduled to undergo a third psychiatric evaluation before District
Court Judge Patricia Cookson sentences him July 10, authorities said.
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- 24 states ban sex with animals
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- The judge barred the media from releasing Ray's photograph,
possibly out of concern for his safety in prison, said Gayle Falkenthal,
spokeswoman for the district attorney's office.
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- At least 24 states have laws prohibiting sexual activity
with animals, according to the Humane Society of the United States in Washington.
Penalties range from misdemeanor sentences in 19 states to fines as high
as $50,000 in Montana and sentences up to 20 years in Massachusetts and
Rhode Island.
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- Ray faces up to 15 years in prison, but only because
he has six prior convictions on his record, such as auto theft. He could
have served seven years had he accepted a plea agreement, Kirkwood said,
but even that punishment the attorney found "excessive."
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- Ray, who is unemployed, has been in custody since last
August, when investigators from the San Diego County Sheriff's Department
caught him trying to have sex with a ewe outside El Capitan High School
in Lakeside. Two other sheep, part of the school's agricultural program,
had died of sexual assault a few weeks earlier, prompting a stakeout.
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- "There was a real concern this might escalate to
the students, so we took it seriously. Obviously the jury did too,"
noted Falkenthal.
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- Defense: Intent not malicious
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- Ray "conceded" the sexual assault, but his
attorney added that she didn't believe his actions fell within the state's
definition of animal cruelty, which specifies intending to maim, mutilate,
torture, wound or kill.
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- "His intent was to complete a sexual act with the
sheep rather than harm or kill the sheep," Kirkwood said.
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- The Humane Society, which has targeted animal sexual
abuse as part of its campaign against animal cruelty, disagrees with this
defense. Like child sexual abuse, animal sexual abuse is an activity in
which one party cannot consent or refuse, the agency said.
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