Supreme Court To Hear Dog Fighting Case This Fall
 Thursday, April 30th, 2009  by Connie T.

Pennsylvania documentary filmmaker Robert Stevens was arrested after producing videos of pit bulls in graphic dog fighting scenes, in violation of the 1999 Depiction of Animal Cruelty Act, which bans the creation, sale or possession of material that depicts animal cruelty.

Stevens' business is called Dogs of Velvet and Steel, and he has produced three documentary films that explain training dogs for hunting and fighting with gruesome footage.

Stevens was convicted in 2005. But last year, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the Animal Cruelty Act law is unconstitutional, and that Stevens should have been protected under the First Amendment right to free speech.

Does this mean Michael Vick would have been let off the hook had he been filming his activities for a documentary?

The U.S. Supreme Court was petitioned to review the case, and although animal cruelty cases are not often heard before the highest court, they have now agreed to review the case this fall.

The HSUS reports that the 1999 anticruelty legislation has almost entirely eliminated the US market for "crush" videos, from which people profited for selling footage of animals being harmed and brutalized.

Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, doesn't buy the First Amendment angle when adjunct to breaking the law.

"We wouldn't allow the sale of videos of actual child abuse or murder staged for the express purpose of selling videos of such criminal acts, and the same legal principles apply to despicable acts of human cruelty," he said.

Over 600 voters on Care2 were polled, and 87% of them said that dog-fighting videos should not get First Amendment protection. One commenter added, "Free speech means just that, being able to say whatever you want to say, not do whatever you want to do.

"And violence...[is] not training or education, it's just violence which the world is way too full of already."

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