To the editor:

Three years ago—July 11, 2016—the Westport Police Department responded to a 911 call from a person who rented a small plot of land from Richard Medeiros down a gravel laneway off American Legion Highway. The man had called because two dogs were attacking a herd of goats.

The police determined that the starving Rottweilers had escaped a filthy enclosure on an adjacent plot to ultimately maul a total of 18 goats. “One goat had been so badly mangled and eaten it was just a hollow cavity with its insides completely eaten,” reported the presiding officer.

That morning the WPD found what was deemed by the ASPCA as the “worst case of animal abuse” they’d ever encountered in the Northeast. Fourteen hundred animals emaciated, sick, dying. Scores of other animals already dead — dumped en masse in shallow holes, others rotting in cages or on the ground.

Twenty-seven people, including property owner Richard Medeiros, were charged with 151 counts of animal abuse by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. There were so many animals involved that the charges were made by species, not by number of animals.

Richard Medeiros and another defendant have since died. Ten cases were “resolved” two weeks ago, the other fifteen will likely be done with by early November.

Massachusetts Superior Court Judge William F. Sullivan dispensed the lightest of sentences to nine men and one woman who, after two and a half years of dillydallying at taxpayers’ expense, finally pleaded guilty — each to multiple counts of animal cruelty. Three defendants received two-year suspended sentences; four received two-year probations; and three were given a continuance without finding. (A “CWoF” is an admission of guilt or an admission to facts sufficient for a finding of guilt, yet the defendant is not found guilty. This loophole means that, after the probationary period has ended, the case is dismissed and the defendant’s record is expunged.)

Not one of these people will spend a single day behind bars for their sadism — not even repeat offender Eddy DeAguiar who was charged in the 2010 Medeiros case on multiple counts of animal abuse.

One person will pay a fine of $750 — this in lieu of 100 hours of community service, an inconvenience he didn’t have time for. Three defendants were allowed to keep their “family dogs,” even though a husband and wife abuse team kept a dog chained so tightly to a tree that it couldn’t access a makeshift doghouse nearby.

I was in the courtroom as Prosecuting Attorney David Clayton read the specific offenses before sentencing. Diseased, emaciated animals infested with internal parasites and lice; oozing necrotic wounds covered in flies. A pig whose bones protruded through its skin. Pigs eating the rotting carcasses of other pigs. Feces everywhere, measuring a foot-deep in enclosures. Animals chained and left to die with no food or water, or with water dark green with slime. Raw meat seething with maggots. Dead rabbits crammed in filthy hutches. At first I thought I’d vomit; by the end of the day my mind had shut down.

Judge William Sullivan is the seventh or eighth judge to oversee this case. It’s hard to keep up with the circuit court turnstile as Massachusetts Superior Court judges play musical chairs every three months, each one entering the years-long Medeiros case with a “So what’s this about?”

Judge Sullivan came into the courtroom declaring he intended “to move this along.” Many of us were happy to hear that until we slammed into the wall of what that actually meant to him, for Sullivan was demonstrably more concerned with clearing the court docket than imposing justice.

Sullivan is now onto another gig, so the remaining 15 defendants who are scheduled to return to court in November will face a different judge. At this point, animal activists have no delusions about the game.

Just as happened this time, the lawyers for both sides will meet with the judge at the front of the courtroom for a “sidebar,” a whispered negotiation about what the worst is the defendant might receive if he pleads guilty. Just as this time, most if not all defendants will plead guilty, knowing they’ll avoid incarceration if they do—because it’s long been clear the evidence is overwhelmingly damning and, to Sullivan’s credit, he did not allow its suppression. And just as this time, all will be let off with, at worse, a suspended sentence and a few hours of community service.

The WPD, with assistance from the ASPCA and several other animal rescue organizations, painstakingly collected and catalogued 35,000 pieces of photographic evidence. WPD submitted a 103-page police report, along with 70 vet reports over the course of six months and hundreds of hours of grand jury discovery. Taxpayers paid for the prosecution, much of the defense, and the circus of circuit judges. The show slithered its way though a billable-hour court system that is a complete and utter failure, except for those who live off the proceeds.

“Justice will be served,” said AG Maura Healy when her office first undertook this case. If the concentration-camp horrors of the Medeiros tenant farm did not merit serious punishment, then it is open season on farm animals in Massachusetts. Starve, beat, or allow an animal to die a slow death of injury or disease. It’s a cakewalk here in the Commonwealth.

Constance Gee

Westport