Virginia Senate Votes to Strengthen Dogfighting Laws

SB 26 Criminalizes Organized Dogfighting

Richmond, Va. – By a 40-0 vote, the Virginia Senate unanimously passed Senate Bill 26 on Tuesday. The bill now moves to the House for consideration. SB 26, drafted by the Animal Legal Defense Fund and patroned by state Senator W. Roscoe Reynolds, adds organized dogfighting to the list of crimes prosecutable under the state RICO ("Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act") laws. RICO—a powerful tool that prosecutors can use to combat organized criminal operations—is commonly used to address a wide variety of organized criminal efforts, including drug dealing, gambling, and trading in child pornography. Given the power to utilize RICO in a dogfighting operation, prosecutors would have increased muscle in seeking justice for the animals abused, and, as in the recent Michael Vick case, even killed by their owners.

"The vast majority of all dogfighting cases are discovered as a collateral matter to some other type of criminal investigation, be it a drug case, a gambling investigation or simply in response to a 911 dispatch to a domestic disturbance," says ALDF Executive Director Stephen Wells.  "Adding dogfighting as a RICO predicate would give law enforcement and prosecutors an additional tool, and strong incentive, to start directly targeting organized dogfighting rings—not to mention that it would send a very strong message to the dogfighting community that the stakes just got substantially higher."

While dogfighting is already illegal in Virginia, the ability to bring a state RICO case would provide specific advantages to law enforcement overseeing dogfighting investigations in Virginia, including:

• More comprehensive investigatory powers;
• Extended statutes of limitations; 
• Longer sentences (in terms of both actual incarceration and the length of post-prison supervision); 
• Larger fines; 
• Pre-conviction "seize and freeze" a defendant's assets; and 
• Forfeiture of the assets used in the illegal activity and the gains generated from the criminal enterprise.
  

These are key tools in combating organized dogfighting rings, which are highly organized and guarded enterprises that are extremely difficult for law enforcement to penetrate.

Related Article:

Virginia Assembly Further Strengthens Dogfighting Laws (3/5/08)