LAW WATCH : Unequal Justice

Sometimes we learn most about criminal law and its problems from the cases that do not receive much public attention. Who could have guessed that a seemingly simple North Hollywood case would connect the interests of battered women and animal rights and highlight an astounding discrepancy?

In the case, a man stood trial last week on a charge that he knocked his girlfriend into a staircase with a blow to the face and then choked her. In the same Van Nuys Municipal Court case, he was also charged with choking her pet rabbit to death.

The first charge involves battery in a dating relationship. The second, cruelty to an animal, and here’s the kicker. Killing the rabbit could result in a jail term of one year, the same maximum sentence the defendant could receive for bouncing his girlfriend off the staircase and choking her. The violence against the human carried no more potential jail time than the violence against the animal. Talk about the scales of justice being out of whack! It gets worse.

The defendant might have to pay a $1,000 fine for constricting the windpipe of his girlfriend but $20,000 for doing the same to the rabbit, albeit with deadlier effect.

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office had an explanation for the sentencing discrepancies. Trust us, it wasn’t worth the space it would take to repeat here.

Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) knows what is necessary: a strengthening of the sanctions for battery in a dating relationship. The need could not be more obvious.