AR-News: (NH - US) Woman who abandoned 12+ cats to starve during cold snap found guilty

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Animal cruelty case ends in guilty verdict By Jason Schreiber
<A HREF="mailto:newsletter at seacoastonline.com">newsletter at seacoastonline.com</A>               
    
EXETER - An Exeter woman accused of abandoning more than a dozen cats in her 
mobile home during January’s dangerous cold snap was found guilty last 
Thursday. Exeter District Court Judge Laurence Cullen made the finding after Carol 
Rowe, 45, pleaded no contest to a charge of animal cruelty to avoid a trial. 
Rowe had pleaded not guilty to 10 charges during her arraignment last month, but 
the charges were since consolidated into a single animal cruelty charge to 
which she entered her no contest plea. Exeter police nabbed Rowe in January after 
the cats were discovered inside her former mobile home at 6 Wayland Circle. 
Police said they had no food or water. Two kittens inside were found dead after 
suffering from starvation. As part of a negotiated sentence recommendation, 
police prosecutor David Mooney asked the court to give Rowe a six-month jail 
sentence, suspended for a year on good behavior. The sentence would also require 
Rowe to pay a $500 fine, with $350 suspended. Rowe’s lawyer, public defender 
Ted Lothstein, recommended that she be allowed to perform 30 hours of 
community service in lieu of paying the fine. Rowe would also have to pay $3,265 in 
restitution to the New Hampshire Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals. Judge Cullen decided to hold off on accepting the sentence recommendation 
until a pre-sentence investigation is performed by the probation department. 
The pre-sentence investigation could take as long as 60 days. A date for 
sentencing hasn’t been set. Lothstein told the court that Rowe suffered from a 
"debilitating illness" and that her mobile home had gone into foreclosure on the 
date the charges were filed. He said she lost her mobile home because she 
couldn’t make her mortgage payments, and that she was "barely able" to take care of 
herself because of her condition. Lothstein declined to comment further on 
Rowe’s illness while the pre-sentence investigation is pending. Rowe entered the 
no contest plea to allow the judge to find her guilty without the case going to 
trial. Rowe had previously told authorities she had been checking on the 
cats, which she had left in the building after it was foreclosed. However, 
authorities said the cats clearly had not been fed. After they were found, four adult 
cats and two kittens had to be euthanized at the SPCA. Rowe told authorities 
that she had initially been given two cats as a present, but couldn’t afford 
to spay or neuter th

    

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