A former Sing Sing prison guard was sentenced this week to a year in jail for killing five kittens in a garbage compactor.
Saying that the crime was “so offensive and so calculated and so gratuitously cruel, it diminishes the humanity of everybody,” Westchester Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Lange sentenced Ronald Hunlock, 48, to a year in prison.
Hunlock actually received six separate one-year sentences — one for each of the kittens as well as one for the mother cat — but the judge allowed Hunlock to serve the sentences concurrently.
Under 3-year-old New York statute, the maximum prison time Hunlock could have received was two years.
On March 22, 2002, Hunlock was officially fired from his job (he had been on suspension without pay since being arrested) and forfeited over half a million in pension and retirement benefits as a result.
Sources:
Sing Sing guard gets year in jail for crushing cats. Owen Motiz, New York Daily News, March 23, 2002.
Sing Sing guard gets year in jail for killing 5 kittens. Jim Fitzgerald, Associated Press, March 22, 2002.