Hello, Friday, and this is the kind of sentence which makes me do some research:
Superior Court Judge James J. Morley said repeatedly Wednesday that he didn't condone anyone sticking his penis into a cow's mouth, but concluded that a grand jury didn't have enough evidence to determine whether Moorestown Patrolman Robert Melia Jr. "tormented" or even "puzzled" the cows when he allegedly committed the deed in 2006
Um, yeah. Come again?
Melia ... was charged with fourth-degree animal cruelty after investigators allegedly found his livestock videos on a computer at his Moorestown home last year. [His attorney] later filed a motion to have those charges dismissed, which Morley granted Wednesday, claiming it was impossible to know how the cows felt about having Melia's penis in their mouth.
"If the Legislature wants to make bestiality a crime, which it was once, so be it. It's not the prosecutor's office's job to outlaw what the Legislature hasn't," he said. "In order for it to be a crime, you have to establish if you tormented the animal, we're talking beating or disfiguring."
Yes, let's take a look at the statute:
22-17. Cruelty in general; disorderly persons offense
A person who shall:
a. Overdrive, overload, drive when overloaded, overwork, torture, torment, deprive of necessary sustenance, unnecessarily or cruelly beat or otherwise abuse, or needlessly mutilate or kill, a living animal or creature;
b. Cause or procure any of such acts to be done; or
c. Inflict unnecessary cruelty upon a living animal or creature of which he has charge either as owner or otherwise, or unnecessarily fail to provide it with proper food, drink, shelter or protection from the weather, or leave it unattended in a vehicle under inhumane conditions adverse to the health or welfare of the living animal or creature--
Shall be guilty of a disorderly persons offense....
And New Jersey has no specific legal prohibition against bestiality, unlike most states. More from the Judge:
"If the cow had the cognitive ability to form thought and speak, would it say, 'Where's the milk? I'm not getting any milk,' " Judge James J. Morley asked.
Children, Morley said, seemed "comforted" when given pacifiers, but there's no way to know what bovine minds thought of Robert Melia Jr. substituting his member for a cow's teat.
"They [children] enjoy the act of suckling," the judge said. "Cows may be of a different disposition."
Burlington County Assistant County Prosecutor Kevin Morgan was certainly irritated by the ruling, claiming the grand jury didn't see the videos of the alleged incident, including one in which one hungry calf allegedly head-butts Melia in the stomach.
"I think any reasonable juror could infer that a man's penis in the mouth of a calf is torment," Morgan argued. "It's a crime against nature."
... "I'm not saying it's OK," Morley said. "This is a legal question for me. It's not a questions of morals. It's not a question of hygiene. It's not a question of how people should conduct themselves."
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what it means to have judges who don't legislate from the bench. This is Strict Constructionism 101. If you don't believe it's "abuse" of an animal to have sexual congress with it just because you can't ask the cow what it thought of the experience, well, whatever it is, it ain't justice.
