On June 17, 2024 my ten-pound, black fluff-ball of a cat, Ichabod Roswell Carney-Krantz, was sleeping in the bushes in front of my house when he got attacked by a pit bull. Ichabod had a chance to flee to safety, but for reasons that are locked behind his inscrutable yellow eyes, he decided to instead defend himself. In the ensuing melee, the woman who was walking her dog kicked him and the dog bit and flipped him into the air. In a desperate attempt to extricate himself from the situation, Ichabod bit the dog’s owner on the leg. I heard the whole thing unfold and rushed outside. It was over in seconds.
My security camera captured the whole event.
This was just the beginning of a legal drama that will continue to unfold over the next several months. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Animal Control has to investigate any animal bite that happens in the City of Denver and when the officer showed up on my property to take Ichabod’s mug shot and see if he was up to date on his vaccines, she also issued me a court summons.
At first I couldn’t believe it. This was the sort of thing that I thought should be resolve amicably between neighbors. I was concerned about the danger of infection and had already offered to pay the dog owner’s medical bills as a courtesy, even as I was racing my own cat to the vet. It was strange that the city was taking this so seriously and was even pressing charges.
Of course, I’m no stranger to legal drama. It feels like I get threatened by someone every other week—like the time that AG1 hired the most expensive anti-defamation lawyer in America to get my reporting shut down before it ever saw the light of day. Their ploy didn’t work. But this is a little bit different. This is an actual criminal charge with the potential for real penalties.
So I have to take this seriously. In the weeks that followed, I reached out to the best animal defense lawyers in Colorado (yeah, I was surprised that this field of law existed, too). I spoke with Kristina Bergsten at the Animal Law Firm and Justie Nicol at Colorado Law Team to get a handle on the situation.
Neither of them thought it was likely that Denver would try to put Ichabod down, but it is still within the realm of legal possibility. Both advised me to hear out what the judge said at my arraignment and see if the prosecutor would consider dropping the charges or offering me a plea deal.
On the morning of August 7th I appeared in court eager to understand my options and saw a sign on the wall that said I could face a maximum fine of $999 and 300 days in jail.
Was jail a real possibility?
I sat nervously on the bench for a half hour until the prosecutor called me over for a negotiation. She said that the city would offer me and Ichabod a deferred judgement in exchange for a guilty plea and about $350 in restitution to the pet owner who was bitten. It honestly wasn’t a terrible deal. I could make the whole thing go away with a stroke of a pen and a swipe of my credit card.
I wanted to take the plea offer.
But when I stood in front of the judge I froze. My throat began to close up and I felt a weight in the pit of my stomach. I’d seen the evidence. Ichabod was taking a nap when he was provoked, kicked and attacked. The dog owner had refused my offer to pay their bills, and had instead asked the city to force me to pay the same amount in criminal restitution.
I perseverated for a few minutes. I could tell the judge was sympathetic. Both she and the prosecutor said I should only take the plea if it felt right to me. While the whole situation was Byzantine, I have to say that I was impressed by the court’s impartiality and even the concern from everyone in the court proceedings. The city was following its procedures and I was simply caught in the currents.
In the end, I remembered what the lawyers I’d spoken to suggested. I could ask for a continuance—an extension to consider my legal options where the prosecution would have to turn over its discovery materials.
And that’s exactly what I did.
I have a second court date set for September 10th where I will officially plead guilty and take a plea deal… or pursue Ichabod’s case all the way to trial. I would have the choice between a magistrate or a jury trial, including all of the procedural motions that go with selecting a jury (like voir dire, where I can toss non-cat people out of the box).
I’m honestly torn. On one hand, the whole thing could just go away so easily. Meanwhile the penalties that I could face on the other side could be positively draconian. To win, the prosecution would have to prove that Ichabod was guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” That means that I only need to convince a single juror that the bite was provoked.
Pursuing the case will likely take weeks or months. It could cost a lot of money. And it will certainly take up a lot of my time. It will also, potentially, be an amazing educational opportunity to see how the court process works first hand. Even though this is only a cat bite case, I feel intense pressure to take a plea deal that I know in my heart is not the truth of what happened.
I haven’t made a final decision yet. So I'd like to ask what YOU think I should do. Do I hire a world-class legal team, bring in animal behavioral psychologists, build scale models of my property lines, and make this the cat show trial of the century? Or do I play it safe, pay up, and go quietly into the night?
I will take your comments seriously. I still have a few days to make up my mind.
As an added bonus for my premium subscribers, I’ve included a few photos of Ichabod behind this paywall. I know you’re going to enjoy them.
Will I Go to Jail for my Cat?