UPDATE/ Mistrial in fatal S.F. dog mauling
- From: "tiny dancer" <tinydancer357@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 22:46:02 -0400
Jury deadlocks on two child endangerment charges
(07-31) 14:32 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A San Francisco jury declared today that
it was hopelessly deadlocked in the child-endangerment trial of a woman who
left her 12-year-old son home alone with two pit bulls that mauled the boy
to death.
The jury of eight women and four men told Judge Anne Bouliane of San
Francisco Superior Court that it had been unable in nearly more than two
days of deliberations to reach a verdict in the trial of Maureen Faibish of
San Francisco. Bouliane declared a mistrial and sent the jurors home.
Jurors voted 10-2 in favor of acquitting Faibish, 40, on a charge of felony
child endangerment. They were split 7-5 in favor of conviction for
misdemeanor child endangerment.
The prosecution argued that Faibish had ignored obvious warning signs that
the family's two pit bulls were a danger when she left her son Nicholas
alone in their Inner Sunset District home June 3, 2005, so she could attend
her daughter's school picnic. Leaving the boy in a basement with food and
video games, but no working toilet, and instructing him not to go near the
dogs constituted criminal negligence, prosecutor Linda Moore said.
The boy had been bitten earlier that day by the Faibishes' 70-pound male pit
bull. Nicholas had a learning disability and had difficulty following
instructions, and his mother should have known he was unlikely to stay in
the basement as she asked, Moore said.
"She knew the dogs were dangerous," Moore said in her closing argument
Thursday. "She left him there, ignoring what she knew. That action, leaving
him alone knowing what she knew, resulted in his tragic death."
The defense, backed up by statements from family friends, neighbors and an
animal behaviorist, portrayed Faibish as a loving mother who cared for her
son and did not know that leaving him alone would put the boy at risk. They
said the dogs had been involved only in minor play-type bites before.
"People get nipped by dogs all the time," defense attorney Lidia Stiglich
told jurors. "That does not lead to a conclusion that the dogs will kill
next time."
Faibish did not testify. She told police she had given the boy a shovel to
prop the basement door shut against the dogs, and that he had snack food to
eat and video games to keep himself entertained.
The male dog had been agitated because the family's female pit bull was in
heat but was refusing to mate with him, Faibish said. She told investigators
that she had warned Nicholas the male dog might view him as a predator.
Her husband, Steven Faibish, was in Oregon preparing for the family's move
when the boy was killed. He testified that neither he nor his wife had any
idea that the animals posed any risk to their three children.
Nicholas had refused to go to school the day he was killed or to accompany
his mother on the school picnic, she told police. She was gone from the
family's home on Lincoln Way for nearly three hours, and when she returned
she found her son dead in an upstairs bedroom.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/31/MNGHEK7GIU6.DTL
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