The Dog Stabber: A Henderson man was sentenced to 14-36 months in prison for stabbing and killing a stranger’s dog on Jan. 14, 2015.
District Court Judge Stefany Miley was able to sentence him to that amount of time in prison due to a law known as “Cooney’s Law” — a law that went into effect in the state of Nevada in 2011, which allows serious animal abusers to be charged with felonies in Nevada.
The man, James Roney, was drinking and was on his balcony when he leapt off, approached the dog, and used a knife to stab it to death.
Roney apologized in court, but Amy Ferreira, Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney at the time, said, “Somebody who’s going to do this for a dog is not going to stop there.”
Roney’s public defender, Max Berkley, said, “Certainly this sends a message in my opinion that animal cruelty is not going to be tolerated, and the punishment is very severe.”
Ferreira noted that Cooney’s Law helped her take a proactive approach to the case, and said she sees egregious cases of animal cruelty all the time.