Among those currently incarcerated are Bacon, sentenced to 16 months, and Addison, who got two years.
In an interview at his family's home in Washington Park a few weeks after the sentencing, Bacon questions the lengths to which investigators were willing to go in order to put him and his cohorts behind bars.
Brian Stauffer
Keegan Hamilton
John Bacon, sentenced to 16 months in federal prison for dogfighting, says of the investigators who locked him up: "It's like they broke the law to get what they wanted."
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"It's like they broke the law to get what they wanted," Bacon says. "They were actually in the box with blood on them, fighting dogs. They was in knee-deep. They're no better than the ones who got convicted."
Bacon says he took good care of his dogs, and provides a copy of a recent vet bill to prove it. (He paid the $118 tab in cash and used an alias.) He says dogfighting is viewed differently in his community, that the lives of animals are not valued the same as those of humans.
Mills says the dogs the investigators acquired for their kennel were eventually turned over to the Humane Society for adoption.
Richard Callahan, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, whose office decided what the dogs could be subjected to, says there's no hard-and-fast rule that determines when and if an undercover investigation should be halted.
"It's always a balancing act and judgment call that you make, and that's made as honestly as one can," he says. "If you cut off an undercover investigation too soon, you foreclose on the possibility of discovery of a wider range of criminal activity. At some point if you wait too long, you've allowed something to go on that shouldn't be allowed to go on. Somewhere in between you make your best judgment."
Local attorney Albert Watkins, whose client Ricky Stringfellow received a yearlong sentence for his role in hosting fights and electrocuting Addison's dog, maintains that Mills, Heath, and their bosses pushed the envelope too far.
"It's one thing being an undercover officer selling narcotics as part of a sting," Watkins contends. "It's a whole other thing to be participating in the very crime for which others are being charged."
The investigation has been almost universally applauded by animal-welfare organizations. "Hopefully it will be duplicated," Rickey says of the landmark case. "We saved more than 400 animals and a countless number of their offspring from being born into a life of torment and torture. Even more impressive long-term is the message that we sent to dogfighters throughout the country. This case really shook the dogfighting community up. They realized law enforcement is serious about this and remain very nervous that they are being infiltrated."
The sentencing precedent set during the court cases in southern Illinois (one of five circuit courts in which the dogfighting cases have been tried) might make dogfighters even more apprehensive.
In 2008, the year after Congress cracked down on dogfighting, another new federal law upped the maximum sentence for animal fighting to five years. Federal guidelines, however, still specify that only zero- to six-month sentences should accompany typical convictions.
Because the guidelines don't take into account factors like the number of dogs involved or whether the defendant was deeply involved in dogfighting as promoter or breeder, Judge Michael Reagan of Southern Illinois District Court created a three-tiered system of "professionals," "hobbyists," and "streetfighters." He decided that the pros—especially ones who kill, maim, or mistreat dogs outside the ring—deserve the most severe sentences. He also ruled that the men must seek permission from the court if they want to own dogs as pets after their release.
Addison's two-year term was the harshest penalty the judge doled out. Stringfellow was deemed a hobbyist; his 12-month sentence is the most lenient among those of his seven co-defendants. Bacon is serving his 16-month stretch in federal prison in Mississippi, while William Berry—aka Black—is locked up for a year and a day.
Reagan also composed what amounts to a 22-page research paper on the history of dogfighting. The document includes 125 footnotes and touches on everything from the "immense" popularity of the activity among American policemen and firefighters in the early 1800s to the current dogfighting craze in Afghanistan, where fights in Kabul now "draw as many as 2,000 people" and "betting pots run as high as $10,000."
All the defendants have appealed their sentences. Citing the pending appeals, Reagan declined to be interviewed for this story.
Another legacy of the investigation is a tool that may help prosecutors convict dogfighters in the future. The Humane Society of Missouri and the ASPCA collected DNA samples from every dog housed at the temporary shelter. Geneticists from the University of California–Davis catalogued the information to create the Canine Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS.
"We know all these networks buy and sell dogs in fairly small circles," Rickey explains. "This will be an important tool. They can tie animals back to one or more convicted dogfighters and show they're from the same bloodline."
Eleven months after the raids and 32 years after he joined the force, Terry Mills retired from the Missouri State Highway Patrol. His partner, Jeff Heath, is currently assigned to the agency's narcotics unit.
keegan.hamilton@riverfronttimes.com
Keegan Hamilton is a former editorial intern at Seattle Weeklyand a current staff writer for Riverfront Times in St. Louis.
