news-record.com

The owner of two pit bulls that bit and mauled a Raleigh first-grader last spring received a withering lecture from an angry Wake County Superior Court judge last week. Then he was let go.

The judge obviously wanted to do more, but North Carolina law does not hold dog owners responsible criminally for the actions of their pets.

Wake District Attorney Colon Willoughby had tried an end-around approach: to charge the dogs’ 23-year-old owner with assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury.

That ploy was used successfully in Greensboro in 2002, when the dog of a man who been stopped by police for traffic infractions bit both officers during a struggle. The man was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon on a government official, a verdict later upheld by the state Court of Appeals.

Wake County’s Willoughby had hoped for a similar outcome. “A deadly weapon is something that can produce serious injury or death under the definition in North Carolina,” he told The News & Observer of Raleigh. “We thought under the facts of this case, the animals fit that description.” In the end, the judge ruled, they didn’t.

The circumstances certainly were compelling enough. The boy was attacked outside of his own home and sustained 42 bites and lacerations on his face, head, arms and body.

But there was no evidence of willful negligence, Judge Ken Titus concluded. Nor was there any evidence that the dog owner intended for the dogs to attack the boy.

All Titus could do was wag a rhetorical finger at the defendant — and dismiss the case.

The problem wasn’t the ruling but the law. Some states, such as Wisconsin, require only that prosecutors prove negligence or intent to inflict injury, not both, as in North Carolina.

Better to write a law that specifically concerns animal attacks. Too many owners place others in harm’s way by failing to keep potentially dangerous pets safely tethered from innocent bystanders and neighbors.

Right now, it appears, only the law is on too tight a leash.