Just because he kicked his neighbor's dog hard enough to kill it doesn't mean Raymond Peebler isn't an animal lover. "Animals are a wonderful thing," Peebler told the jury in his criminal trial Thursday. "If people have dogs and cats, that's wonderful."
Peebler, 50, who himself owns a dog with his wife, is on trial for delivering a fatal kick to a 6-month-old Yorkshire Terrier named Cascade, which belonged to his Bloomington, Iowa, neighbor, John Wilt. He faces up to two years in prison and $5,000 in fines if convicted.
Peebler claimed on the stand Thursday that he only kicked the unleashed dog the morning of June 17, 2001, because he wanted to prevent Cascade from defecating on his lawn.
"If it wasn't going to the bathroom, I would have never did what I did," he said. "I thought I had the right to get the dog off my property."
While much of Peebler's testimony was matter-of-fact, the defendant showed remorse when asked about the fatal blow. "I'm not proud of that," he said. "I'm totally ashamed of it because it was a dog and because it died."
Peebler and his lawyer, Mike Schilling, are betting on protection from an Iowa statute, which excludes a person who is "reasonably acting to protect the person's property from damage caused by an unconfined animal" from charges of animal abuse.
Prosecutor Mona Clarkson, however, tried to show that Peebler's kick wasn't meant to defend his property; it was meant to get back at Wilt. To do that, she focused on the bad blood between the families.
When the Wilts first moved in, the two families were on good terms. John Wilt would borrow Raymond Peebler's tools, and their children and pets would play together. But the friendship between the neighbors abruptly soured when Wilt and Peebler had a falling out.
According to Peebler, the Wilts had been alarmed for some time about the way a neighboring family was treating one of its dogs, and when John Wilt's sister kidnapped the dog and brought it to an animal agency, Wilt implicated Peebler. But Peebler wanted nothing to do with it, he said.
He went straight to the neighbor and explained that he wasn't involved with the dog heist, and then confronted Wilt.
"Stay away from my property and get out of my garage," Peebler told Wilt, according to his testimony. "You are nothing but a troublemaker."
Peebler remained mostly calm during Clarkson's cross-examination, but admitted in an angry outburst about how the feud had affected him. "There were five years," he said, raising his voice. "Five years of John Wilt laughing in my face. Five years of putting up with him."
Clarkson also tried to show that, because the Peeblers had signed a formal complaint about the howling of another neighborhood dog, they knew how to use legitimate channels to settle their problems and should have done so with their boundary squabble.
"You knew how to get rid of dogs, didn't you?" she asked Peebler. "I didn't want Wilt to get rid of his dogs," Peebler said. "I just thought [the problem] would go away."
Peebler's wife Michelle testified that she and her husband "just realized that John is just a troublemaker. It's always about the same. He feels like he can do whatever he wants."
A series of Wilt's co-workers who testified on behalf of the defense detailed the rotund registered nurse's many schemes to antagonize Peebler. Ruth Schaffer, 41, a dietary manager who worked with John Wilt, testified that Wilt had bragged to her about one midnight incident in particular. "He told me that he couldn't sleep one night so he cleaned his kitty litter out and dumped it on the neighbor's vehicle," said Schaffer. "He thought it was funny."
Wanda Shrader, another co-worker of Wilt's, described another of Wilt's ruses that he had disclosed to her. "John was gonna crap in his yard," she said. "He talked about putting it in a bag, putting it on his porch and lighting it on fire. He thought it was funny."
Schilling called other witnesses to show that Peebler was not the hothead the prosecution portrayed him to be. Randy Rawlings, a neighbor who has known Peebler for 25 years, told the jury that Peebler was calm after Rawlings accidentally ran over and killed the Peeblers' dog in an alley behind the house.
"I'm in the wrong," Peebler said, according to Rawlings. "I should have had my dog on the leash." Rawlings also alleged that Wilt intimidated him because of his penchant for calling the police.
"I was afraid to step out in my front yard and pass gas because he would call the police," Rawlings testified, adding that Wilt called the police on him at least 12 times.
But Peebler didn't come off well either. Another neighbor, Penelope Furnald, called as a rebuttal witness by the prosecution, said Peebler had tied her Alaskan Malamute's snout shut with a rope because it wouldn't stop howling.
Donald Allgood, the area veterinarian, testified about examining the convulsing animal after Wilt brought it into his clinic. Clarkson asked what kind of blow could kill a dog.
"Basically, dogs are pretty tough little individuals," said Allgood. "It would take quite a substantial impact."
Deborah Leasch, the police officer who responded to Wilt's 911 call the morning of the incident, described the scene when she arrived.
"[Cascade] was gasping through the mouth, I assume trying to get air. There was blood on the couch. Mr. Wilt was very upset, crying," Leasch said.
When Leasch sought out Peebler for his side of the story, the man was unabashed, she claimed. "He said that he kicked the dog and that he had every right to do that."
At one point during Thursday's testimony, Schilling asked the judge out of the jury's presence to exclude the Court TV camera from the room because, he said, a viewer had called his office and left menacing comments on his answering machine.
After reviewing the tape, associate court judge Mark Kruse called the messages examples of "pathetic harassment" and declined the lawyer's request.
A jury took less than an hour to find an Iowa man not guilty of animal abuse for drop kicking a neighbor's puppy 8 feet, killing the 6-pound pet. References« Back to Search Results
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