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Pooch owners, beware
High court restores bite to Youngstown’s law on vicious dogs
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN — The Ohio Supreme Court has put teeth back into the city’s vicious dog ordinance, and the city prosecutor said the ordinance will be vigorously enforced.
“It is a huge victory for the citizens of Youngstown and also for public safety,” City Prosecutor Jay Macejko said of the top court’s decision.
“We can definitely step up our enforcement efforts. We are going to recharge some cases that we had to dismiss before this decision came out, so we will be issuing new arrest warrants in some cases that we held in abeyance,” he added.
Macejko said he could think of a dozen such dormant cases, including some involving vicious attacks and serious injury. One such case that will be pursued is one in which a 9-year-old child was attacked by a pair of dogs, he said.
Macejko spoke after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled 5-2 to uphold the city’s ordinance that requires confinement of vicious dogs and requires the city prosecutor to prove in a criminal trial after a dog bite that the defendant’s dog is vicious.
“It clarifies this down to where, now, everybody is on the same page,” Dave Nelson, acting Mahoning County dog warden, said of the high court decision. “It’s going to help out not only the people that own the dog, but the safety of the people in the city,” he added.
City dog owners are now on notice that, if their dogs, regardless of their breed, escape from their property and bite another animal or a person, a criminal misdemeanor charge will apply against the owner, Nelson said. “Now these people have to be responsible,” he said of dog owners.
The decision, written by Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton and released Wednesday, reverses a unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the Youngstown-based 7th District Court of Appeals.
The 7th District Court said the ordinance was unenforceable because it violated a dog owner’s right to due process of law. That court said the city’s ordinance did not give dog owners a meaningful opportunity to challenge the labeling of their dogs as vicious.
“A responsibility of dog ownership is to maintain and control the animal. This ordinance requires no more and no less, and, therefore, it does not violate procedural due process,” the state’s top court ruled.
Youngstown’s ordinance “is rationally related to the city’s legitimate interest in protecting citizens from vicious dogs and therefore is constitutional,” the high court ruled.
The case arose from an April 18, 2007, incident, in which David Roch of Youngstown and his 16-pound wire fox terrier were attacked while walking in Mill Creek Park by two unleashed and unaccompanied Italian mastiff/cane corso dogs, a male weighing 170-180 pounds and a slightly smaller female.
Roch, a retired city firefighter, was bitten on his hand and wrist, and his dog suffered several bites before Roch retreated to a nearby garage and his dog fled.
Police arriving at the scene shot and killed both of the attacking dogs after officers said the dogs fast approached them.
Jammie Traylor, who owned the attacking female dog and had the attacking male dog at his residence for breeding purposes, was convicted by a jury of violating the ordinance.
Judge Elizabeth A. Kobly, of Youngstown Municipal Court, fined Traylor $750, sentenced him to 90 days in jail and placed him on two years’ probation. Traylor, 21, of Youngstown, was jailed for a week and released pending appeal.
Traylor will soon be scheduled to appear before Judge Kobly for re-imposition of his sentence, Macejko said. “Essentially, any stay that he had is gone now, and he will have to do his 90 days” in jail, Macejko said.
Roch, who underwent surgery, still has not regained the full use of his hand, Macejko said. Roch’s dog required surgery for injuries to her ear and head.
Dissenting from the high court’s decision were Justices Paul E. Pfeifer and Judith Ann Lanzinger, who said the city ordinance is unconstitutional because it doesn’t provide “fundamental due process protections.”
Traylor’s lawyer, James E. Lanzo, did not return a call seeking comment.
If Traylor were to appeal, saying the ordinance denied him due process under the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, that appeal would likely go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, which would likely refuse to review the case, Macejko said.
“I don’t see it going any further” than the state supreme court, Macejko concluded.