Jury finds pair guilty on all counts in Flash the Dog case

PALMER — Jason Alan McDonnell, 36, and Gina M. Jones, 37, were each found guilty by a Superior Court jury in Palmer on Monday on all counts in the theft of a 1999 Dodge van and the subsequent death of a 12-year-old golden retriever named Flash after they abandoned the vehicle last July.

Each defendant was charged with four counts and McDonnell had already pleaded guilty to three of the charges, but maintained his innocence on count three of the indictment — felony animal cruelty.

Jones pleaded not guilty to all four charges, claiming the theft was entirely the idea of McDonnell, as well as the decision to leave the dog in the hot car.

Court adjourned Friday afternoon following closing arguments and jury instructions from Judge Gregory L. Heath and the jury began deliberating.

McDonnell’s attorney, Andrew Weinraub maintained his client was not guilty of felony animal cruelty after he had already pleaded guilty to vehicle theft, property theft and misdemeanor animal cruelty. Weinraub argued in closing that to prove that charge the state would need to demonstrate that McDonnell ‘tortured’ the animal, which, he said was the one word the 42 words in count three of the indictment came down to.

“The only difference between count three and count four is the mental state (of the defendant),” Weinraub said. “One of the charges is negligence, the other is torture. My client did not torture Flash.”

Weinraub conceded his client made an “unbelievably ill-advised, terrible, even stupid decision,” but argued that did not mean he intended the animal harm.

“The ’99 Dodge van is replaceable; Flash is not. We appreciate that; that is not lost on the defense,” Weinraub told the jurors. “Flash suffered; we’re cognizant of that. However… you must deal with this case on Alaska law, not emotion.”

Weinraub tried to sew more doubt by questioning earlier testimony by the prosecution’s expert veterinary witness as to the veracity of the prosecution’s claim that Flash died of heat stroke and not natural causes.

“Certainly my client knew Flash was in the van; that’s not being argued. That would be a silly argument and not one we’re not making,” Weinraub said. “But the time of death is an important thing for you to consider.”

Weinraub went on to cite a 2006 study which, he said, studied 54 dogs believed to have died from heat stroke. Nineteen of them, he said, were proven to have, in fact, died from natural causes, even though, just like the other 35, those 19 “looked like heat stroke” at first glance.

Weinraub said the only way to know for sure would have been to do a necropsy, which was not done. Weinraub also said a post-mortem examination showed Flash had ‘severely infected teeth,’ which could be a sign of kidney or heart disease in dogs.

In rebuttal, prosecutor Melissa Howard said that the state needn’t prove that McDonnell ‘tortured’ Flash to make the aggravated charge stick, only that they needed to prove the accused ‘knowingly’ caused harm.

In her closing, Howard began by projecting a photo of ‘Flash’ onto a screen for jurors to watch, while she played the 9-1-1 call from Mark Thomsen, whose van had just been stolen, but whose concern was more focused on the welfare of his dog than the 17-year-old van.

“I just want my dog back!” Thomsen told the dispatcher.

“They left (Flash) with no fans, no air, no water — no life,” Howard said. “When they left Flash in that fan they knew it would inflict prolonged, physical suffering on that animal.”

Howard went on to revisit early interviews with state troopers in which Jones told police that she and McDonnell had been picked up by a ‘creepy drunk guy’ driving the van, a character she said they’d successfully proven didn’t exist.

“They stole the van to party, then abandoned it and made up this third person,” the prosecutor said. “They had to cut ties with the van, and Flash was just part of the van.”

On her closing, Jones’ lawyer Hannah Thorssin-Bahri, admitted her client did lie to police on multiple counts, and made unwise decisions, but, Thorssin-Bahri said, the state did not meet the burden of proof to convict her client on any of the four counts, to which all Jones had pleaded not guilty.

Beyond that, Thorssin-Bahri said, her client wasn’t guilty because the state could not disprove that McDonnell was the one who stole the van and left her off by the side of the road before he, and he alone, abandoned Flash in the hot van.

“Gina took good care of Flash, while he was in her care,” Thorssin-Bahri said. “She expected Jason to take care of Flash and he didn’t.”

Thorssin-Bahri asked the jury to acquit her client of all charges, noting that the only charge she could be found guilty of was criminal mischief in the fifth degree for getting in as a passenger of a vehicle she knew to be stolen.

In the end, the jury did not side with the contentions of either of the accused and returned guilty verdicts on both.

Sentencing has been set for Jan. 5.

In an e-mail to KTUU TV in Anchorage, Howard said, “Our community is besieged by theft crime… When the theft leads to the senseless death of a family pet, it’s especially upsetting.”

Weinraub declined to give comment after the verdict.