Minnesota Lawyer Blog

My learned colleague, Michelle Lore, recently posted her thoughts about the case of the young federal auditor who came to town and ripped the head off of a duck in a hotel lobby. We received the following comment to the post, which I thought was interesting enough to pull out and re-post here.

Oh Please! Yes, animal cruelty is wrong, but this case is about an
upstanding guy who got drunk & did something stupid. He lost his federal
job, has to come back to this icebox to defend himself, and has to spend oodles
of dollars on an attorney. People can back-date stock options to the tune of
millions of dollars, rip off investors through "creative" accounting, and steal
people's pensions yet not suffer any consequences. Harm one waterfowl and Katy
bar the door. Let's get our priorities straight.I guess it's okay to kill a duck
with a shotgun and then eat it, but if you do it at a hotel, it's a felony. Is
it wrong? Yes. Should he be a criminal because of it? No. Priorities people,
priorities!

Hmmm. Well, actually I think that it should be a felony to kill a duck with a shotgun in a hotel ...

I have no idea whether the defendant is generally considered "upstanding" or not. I don't think it speaks well of him that the one incident we do know of is tearing a duck's head off -- not something even an inebriated person would typically do. And as for his having to come back to "this icebox" to defend himself, the way around that would have been not to come here and tear the head off a duck in the first place. Pretty simple really. Lots of folks manage to do it.

Personally, I don't have an opinion what the defendant’s sentence should be -- I leave that to the judge who will hear all the facts. However, I can’t help wondering whether the above comment didn’t come from Michael Vick.