Texas Families Against Dangerous Dogs

April 1, 2007 – 5:05 pm

Last year, a friend’s grandmother, Lillian Stiles, was mauled in her yard by six pit bull/rottweiler dogs. Just recently, the owner of the dogs was found not guilty in her death. I could hardly believe the news when I heard he was not guilty. Apparently, Texas law is somewhat antiquated when it comes to protecting the innocent from attacking dogs. Consequently, Lillian’s daughter has started Texas Families Against Dangerous Dogs. There are many things you can do to help the Texas government make the right decision during this session. Please consider taking a moment to voice your opinion to your State Senator and State Representative.

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  • bradford

    The verdict isn’t that surprising if you know what he was charged with and the burden of proof.

    He was charged with criminally negligent homicide. Under current law, to be found guilty the dog has to be ruled dangerous and then allowed to roam free. However, testimony indicates that the dogs were gentle, had never attacked anyone before Stiles, and even played with kids. So, it’s not unbelievable that he would not be considered guilty of allowing a known dangerous dog to roam free.

    If you had a dog that was gentle and played with kids and then one day just freaked out and killed someone, do you think you should do jail time?

  • http://www.blakeatwood.com/blog admin

    I forget that of my numerous readers (really, they must be in the tens by now), there are a few that read and, unfortunately, for argument’s sake, have a bad habit of keeping the details ever in mind.

    I’m obviously biased in this instance, but your point is clear enough. I still have a hard time believing six dogs of that breed had always been gentle. Good thing I wasn’t on the jury.

    And I do have a dog – a very large one at that, who’s always playful, but could definitely do some damage should he ever decide to go mad. But he’s not ‘on the loose.’ There’s one difference I didn’t know about – we have a leash law, Milam county does not.

    Thinking more about it, what about car accidents? If a tire decides to blow and you go careening into another car, are you still responsible for the aftermath? Even if the tire had no indications of going bad? If you killed someone, you’d still be guilty of involuntary manslaughter, right?

    I think my point is that someone should ‘pay,’ and since you can’t send the dogs to jail, the owner should have been made to make some kind of restitution. Thus the new bill.

  • bradford

    Restitution make sense to me. Jail time doesn’t in a case where the dogs were not known to be violent. And, for what it’s worth, the dogs were a mix and the owner said he didn’t know the breeds. It’s up to you to decide if you buy that line. Evidently the judge or jury or whoever did.

    “If you killed someone, you’d still be guilty of involuntary manslaughter, right?”

    Only if convicted. But this charge was criminally negligent homicide, not involuntary manslaughter. Note the “criminally” and the negligent in there. It was up to the DA to determine the charge. They didn’t go with manslaughter. If the DA charges somebody with more than the facts can support, it’s the DA’s fault that the guy isn’t found guilty.