Last year, a man and his girlfriend got in an argument about him going out drinking with his friends instead of going trick or treating with the family. In the course of the argument, he pushes her. She decided to stay when he promised not to do it again. A few weeks later, he hung her cat in a noose, apparently to send her a signal. A month after that, he choked her in front of her six year old son.

In 10 years of criminal prosecution and defense, I can tell you that one thing will matter more than anything else to the jury – that he killed the cat. I have seen terrible cases of domestic and child abuse shrugged off by juries. “Well, she stayed with him!” “I wouldn’t do it, but a kid should be spanked every once in a while, even if it did leave scars.” But, if there’s an animal involved, it makes the news.

I once prosecuted a man for assaulting his cousin with an axe handle. His criminal history included an incident when he and a friend had broken into a house, tied up a man in front of his family, held the family at gunpoint with a sawed off shotgun, put the man in the bathtub, and release a live rattlesnake on the man. I’m glad to say that the jury gave him 99 years in prison. It didn’t even make the news.

About the same time, two kids hit a dog with a skateboard in the same town. They videotaped it and sent it to their friends. It made national news. My colleague could barely find the time to prosecute the case, he was so busy answering calls from the press.

Don’t get me wrong – animal abuse is terrible. Crimes committed against the helpless, human or animal, are the worst sorts of crimes. Animal abuse has a high correlation with spousal and child abuse. However, I think it says something not entirely positive about our culture that this case, even though it involved a mother being strangled in front of her own child, would not have made the news, but for the death of the cat. We spend hundreds of thousands to dollars to try to get bear baiting banned, but shelters for abused women are chronically underfunded. I’m all for animal rights, but what about human rights?

The views expressed here are my own, and not those of my employer.