Judge Michael Cicconetti has a unique way of dealing with convicted criminals in his town – go to jail, or let the punishment fit the crime. Last August, Alyssa Morrow pleaded guilty to animal cruelty and neglect for leaving her dog in a filthy house with no food, so she was sentenced to working in the stinkiest area of a garbage dump!
“I’m gonna vomit reading the report,” the judge said.
Moose was trapped in the disgusting house and left to starve for a week before he was rescued. Judge Cicconetti is a dog lover, and Morrow’s treatment of her pet incensed him.
“You know I can’t interpret the feelings of a dog, but boy if dogs could tell you how they felt –
“Abandoned?” Morrow interjected.
“Oh yeah, and scared and frightened and sick,” Judge Cicconetti continued. “Maybe you should get a little taste of that, but I’m going to let you have a choice here, and the choice is I want you to live like Moose, and in order to do that I want you to go down to the county dump, to the landfill, and I want them to find the stinkiest, smelliest, god-awful odor place they can find in that dump and I want you to sit there for eight hours tomorrow, to think what you did to that dog while you smell the odor. If you puke, you puke.”
Morrow spent the day as sentenced, picking up trash in the most noisome area of the landfill. Moose recovered, and was put up for adoption. A search for him on Petfinder and Adoptapet yielded no results, so hopefully he has been adopted.
Morrow isn’t the only one to be slapped with an appropriate penalty: a young woman who took a cab 30 miles and didn’t pay her driver was given the option of going to jail or walking 30 miles in 48 hours. A young man who stole a bike opted to ride a bike in a community parade.
The Painesville, Ohio judge says that while the national average recidivism (repeat offender) rate is 75 percent, his is down to 10. His methods are obviously working, and the public is thrilled to see criminals who are actually being forced to have a taste of their own medicine.
