State v. Webb

130 S.W.3d 799, 2003 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 567, 2003 WL 21488010
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee
DecidedJune 24, 2003
DocketW2001-00447-CCA-R3-CD
StatusPublished
Cited by36 cases

This text of 130 S.W.3d 799 (State v. Webb) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Webb, 130 S.W.3d 799, 2003 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 567, 2003 WL 21488010 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2003).

Opinion

OPINION

ALAN E. GLENN, J.,

delivered the opinion of the court,

in which JOE G. RILEY and THOMAS T. WOODALL, JJ., joined.

The defendants, Sandra Kay Webb and Tabitha Nicole Webb, were convicted of forty-seven counts of cruelty to animals and each was sentenced to concurrent sentences of eleven months and twenty-nine days for each count, with incarceration for sixty days and a prohibition from either owning animals for ten years. In addition, the defendants were ordered to pay $39,978.85 in restitution to the Jackson-Madison County Humane Society and to perform fifty hours of community service work, and each defendant was fined a total of $5000. Soon afterwards, the trial court found that each had possessed animals since their convictions and revoked their community corrections sentences. On appeal, the defendants argue that their convictions should be reversed because the search warrant affidavit was defective, as was its execution; the affiant was untruthful in the affidavit; the animal cruelty statute is unconstitutionally vague; animal shelter records, utilized by the State during the trial, were hearsay and should not have been allowed; the evidence was insufficient, failing to prove either that the defendants acted knowingly or intentionally or failed to provide necessary care; the humane society was not entitled to restitution; the defendants should not have been required to serve their sentences in incarceration or prohibited for ten years from possessing animals; their community corrections sentences should not have been revoked; and the court should not have ordered that their dogs be forfeited. Following our review, we affirm the judgments of the trial court as to forty-seven of the counts, but remand for entry of a corrected judgment to show that the de *804 fendants were acquitted of Count 8 and for an evidentiary hearing as to the payment of restitution.

FACTS

The defendants were charged with cruelty to animals in a 101-count indictment and were convicted of forty-seven counts according to the verdict forms. However, as the verdicts were announced, the jury foreperson mistakenly stated that the defendants had been found guilty of Count 8 although the form for that count, signed by the foreperson, shows that both were found not guilty. As to Count 8, therefore, we remand for entiy of a corrected judgment. The judgments of conviction for the remaining forty-seven counts are affirmed.

State’s Proof

The State’s first witness was Gerald Wiltshire, an investigator with the Jackson Police Department Financial Crimes Unit. He said that on April 14, 2000, he had assisted Sergeant Mark Wray of the Madison County Sheriffs Department in executing a search warrant at the defendants’ property, 179 Sanderson Road in Mercer, Tennessee. He described the building on the propei'ty as “a double wide mobile home-type residence,” with three storage rooms behind it and “a dog-type kennel house that had fencing in the back like a dog run on it.” Wiltshire described what he saw as he entered the double wide trailer:

When I went into the front door immediately in — inside the front door on the far wall was a cage with a couple of chocolate-colored dogs in it. And the dogs were covered with a lot of feces.
The property smelled of urine, an ammonia-type smell that was burning your eyes when you made entry in the residence.
Then off to the left there was another cage that had a Doberman[] — what I think was a Doberman Pinscher-looking type puppy in it that had dirty bandages on his ears and a dirty bandage on the tail. And his empty dog bowl where you would put water and food was covered with ... old and new feces. I mean, it was crusty and things of that nature.
There was another cage, and then in each of the — well, in the first bedroom to the left into the hallway area. There was also a cage in the hallway area. Each of the cages had dogs in it.
The one in the — I believe it was what we called the office where all the computer and the big — their business information was, a dog there had puppies.
In the bedroom off the hallway to the right was two or three large cages that had large animals in it.
The kitchen had a IV bag hanging from the cabinet that went into the sink. And there was the — Where the bedrooms and the office were at was in I would call disarray. I mean, the smell was overwhelming and the — Where the dogs were at, particularly in the living room area when you first walk in the door, those dogs did not appear to be kept well at all.
There were — In the kitchen there was — In one of the refrigerators there was medicine in there that — I don’t know what kind of medicine it was.
There was — in the bedroom to the right, the two large cages, there were two dogs in one of the cages. I don’t know how long they’d been in there. They didn’t appear to be — to have enough room to be in those cages for very long periods of time.
I didn’t see any food in any of the cages, any water in any of the cages that I saw.

*805 Investigator Wiltshire said that “most of the cages in the house had two dogs or a dog and puppies, except for the one with the Doberman that had the bandages on his ear[s].” The cages in the living room had what appeared to be metal flooring and those in the bedroom had wire-mesh flooring. He said that all of the cages were dirty with “[a]nimal feces, dog feces, and what I would assume was urine from the smell.” In some of the cages in the living room, the feces “was caked onto the food bowl and kind of looked like it had dripped down the side,” and “[i]t didn’t appear ... to have been cleaned any time recently.” He believed that the dogs in these cages could not stand or sit without being in feces and urine.

Investigator Wiltshire also described the kennels on the property:

I saw many what I call kennels. It’s where the fencing with the dogs were kept in individual areas. It appeared to have what I call pea gravel on the ground. But on top of that was feces that ... was at least in some areas three or four inches thick that had turned white already.
The dogs that were housed in those areas — I believe that every dog I saw had ticks on it. Some of the dogs I saw appeared to have eye problems, looked to be infected and things of that nature.
I saw one dog that — While the others were all barking and running back and forth in some of the cages, there were a few dogs that just laid there.
One of them was — I thought at first might have been dead, but he got up eventually. But he wasn’t making any noise. And ... [h]is toenails were all curled over on each other.
And I believe he had quite a few ticks on him and some eye problems, as I recall. Might have been missing an eye or it was swollen shut, I don’t remember.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
130 S.W.3d 799, 2003 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 567, 2003 WL 21488010, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-webb-tenncrimapp-2003.