The cover of children's book 'Tipper and the Shamrock Beads,' written by MaryAnn Russo and her late father. (Christian Faith Publishing)
The state’s highest court said it does not approve of Maryann Russo’s decision to have her 14-year-old cockapoo die at home, declining a veterinarian’s recommendation to euthanize her very ill pet, but justices determined her choice does not violate the state’s animal cruelty laws.
In considering the case , the Supreme Judicial Court ruled Monday that Russo’s actions do not rise to the level of knowingly causing her dog Tipper to suffer unnecessary torture, suffering, or cruelty. The high court affirmed lower court decisions to dismiss the criminal complaint.
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court asks, do you have to put down a dying dog?
“Our opinion should not be read to condone the conduct alleged in the complaint or take a position one way or the other regarding ‘complicated’ and ‘heartbreaking’ end-of-life decisions,” Justice Frank Gaziano wrote for the majority. “Instead, we hold, on these facts, that the defendant committed no crime.”
As Gaziano laid out in the 20-page opinion , Russo brought Tipper to a veterinarian on Christmas Day 2020, seeking to have a large necrotic mass removed from the small dog’s side. The veterinarian assessed Tipper, observing bed sores and open wounds, and told Russo that Tipper would not survive surgery.
In the veterinarian’s opinion, according to the court’s decision, Tipper was terminally ill and nothing could be done to manage his pain. She recommended euthanasia. Russo falsely promised to bring Tipper to a different veterinary practice to be euthanized, instead bringing her dog home to die.
The veterinarian alerted the Animal Rescue League of Boston of suspicions that Tipper was still alive with serious medical issues, prompting a special State Police officer with the Animal Rescue League to check in on Tipper, after being assured that the cockapoo was in good health. Tipper was close to death with a distended stomach and periodic, shallow breathing.
According to court filings, Russo assured the officer that Tipper no longer needed pain medication and he was asked to leave and not return. Tipper was later seized by the officer, pursuant to a warrant, and euthanized. The Norfolk district attorney’s office and the Animal Rescue League brought charges against Russo for animal cruelty in 2021.
A Quincy district court and a state appeals court dismissed the claim, with the district court judge writing, “I do not conclude that the statute contemplates an affirmative obligation to euthanize an animal loved and cared for by its owner.”
SJC justices were asked to decide whether Russo’s conduct ran afoul of the state’s animal cruelty law – first passed in 1835 and the second oldest such law in the United States, which built on the lineage of protections assured to people and domestic animals under the Massachusetts Body of Liberties in 1641.
Under that first declaration of civil liberties in the Bay State, the text admonishes “no man shall exercise any tirranny or crueltie towards any bruite creature which are usuallie kept for man’s use.”
Some 200 years later and amended in years since, Massachusetts lawmakers made it a crime to, among other things, knowingly and willfully authorize or permit an animal under a person’s care “to be subjected to unnecessary torture, suffering, or cruelty of any kind.” Such animal abuse comes with a maximum penalty of seven years in state prison.
“The plain language interpretation of the statutory language is consistent with public policy favoring minimizing animal suffering in a wide variety of contexts and in preventing intentional and neglectful animal cruelty,” assistant district attorney Tracey Cusick wrote in the brief . Russo failed to treat “panful conditions,” Cusick wrote, permitting Tipper to suffer needlessly.
At issue, Gaziano wrote, is whether Russo intended both the underlying action and its harmful consequences.
“No person of reasonable intelligence would have noticed that ‘unnecessary’ suffering includes the suffering of a terminally ill animal who is dying a natural death, whose condition was neither caused nor permitted to be caused by the owner/possessor,” Russo’s attorney, Jason Bolio, wrote in a filing .
The Animal Rescue League and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which submitted a joint friend-of-the court brief in the case, argued that the Legislature has acted consistently to strengthen animal cruelty statutes since 1835, warning that such a ruling “could have sweeping implications on animal suffering.”
“If the Legislature had intended to exempt an obligation to alleviate suffering at the end of life, it would have done so in the many revisions of the statute,” they wrote. The issue is not limited to euthanasia, they say, but an obligation to intervene.
“Intervention at the end of an animal’s life need not be euthanasia, and may include measures such as pain relief or treatment of other medical conditions to attempt to alleviate suffering,” the groups wrote.
Based on the state’s complaint, Gaziano said Russo took Tipper home to die with the understanding that “nothing could be done to alleviate his pain, short of euthanasia.”
They put a diaper on Tipper, apparently made some use of pain medication, and laid the dog on a couch atop linens and near a large religious statue. According to filings, members of the Russo family seemed upset at the idea that people would kill their dogs.
The complaint “details the efforts of the defendant’s family to make Tipper comfortable in the time he had remaining,” Gaziano wrote. “These allegations do not create a reasonable inference that the defendant intended for Tipper to unnecessarily suffer.”
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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