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Judge: No Proof Cows 'Tormented' By Oral Sex

By Robert J. Ambrogi

This has to be the strangest legal story I have read in a long time, if not ever. In New Jersey, a judge has dismissed charges against a former police officer accused of engaging in oral sex with calves. The reason the judge dismissed the charges: He had no way of knowing how the calves felt about the encounters. To be fair, the judge's point was not that the sex may have been consensual. You see, New Jersey has no law against bestiality. Instead, prosecutors charged the officer, Robert Melia Jr., with animal cruelty. That crime requires proof that the animal was "tormented." Melia's attorney, Mark Catanzaro, filed a motion to dismiss the charges, claiming it was impossible for anyone to know how the cows felt about having his client's penis in their mouths. Superior Court Judge James J. Morley agreed that he could not look into the mind of a cow. "If the Legislature wants to make bestiality a crime, which it was once, so be it," he said. "It's not the prosecutor's office's job to outlaw what the Legislature hasn't. In order for it to be a crime, you have to establish if you tormented the animal, we're...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on September 29, 2009 (boomark / email).