Right cause, wrong case

A week ago today, I found myself in a crowded courtroom in Palmer for a hearing on a request for reduced bail. It wasn’t a violent crime, the defendant wasn’t a celebrity, and the top charge was the theft of a 17-year-old van — certainly not circumstances that would ordinarily warrant any media source staffing a bail hearing.

As the judge rejected the request, the defendant’s attorney looked at the gallery with an expression that could only be described as incredulity that this case had somehow become the crime of the century.

She made sure it went on the record that so many had shown for a procedure ordinarily so unremarkable, and to imply the ruling may have been impacted by public opinion.

It was, of course, the lesser charge against her client that had drawn such hullaballoo — animal cruelty. It was added to the charges against the two defendants for their alleged stranding of a 12-year-old golden retriever named Flash in the vehicle, where the dog was found dead, three hot summer days later when police recovered the van.

The “Justice for Flash” mob, at least 20-deep on this day (it will almost certainly larger for the next hearing Aug. 12) came equipped with T-shirts, bumper stickers, hashtags, organization and a momentum that doesn’t show any signs of slowing.

“This isn’t a dog beating or throwing poisoned meat over the fence knowing they’ll eat it… (but) I wanted to be here as a representative for Flash and animal cruelty, in general,” said Alisha Mayer of the ‘Justice for Flash’ group. “There’s not enough being done. Convictions that are coming out are pretty lame… I just want to see something done to send a message that it matters to people and if they do it, there’s going to be consequences.”

Now, let me say I’ve only been here a few weeks and can’t really say the degree of voracity to Mayer’s claim that animal abuse in Alaska is worse than elsewhere. I’ll take her word for it, though.

Alaska is remote and wild and its most famous sporting event obliges dogs to pull sleds for hundreds of miles in freezing temperatures.

The Iditarod is also probably the most anthropomorphizing sport of all, even more so than horse racing. When I was a sports editor in Arizona, each March I looked forward to running multiple Associated Press photos of these adorably innocent champions.

It makes sense then that Alaska would have this heightened, polarized relationship with animals. And it makes sense that to get the kind of change they want, the animal rights crowd needs to throw its collective weight behind a particular case.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Flash’s is the one.

I don’t have any inside information on the case, but it would seem quite possible for a defense to raise reasonable doubt as to whether the thief or thieves even knew the dog was in the van. Is it really so unbelievable that a 12-year-old retriever wouldn’t just curl up in a corner in the back and be neither seen nor heard?

Also, often in these types of cases, the charges thrown in at the end of an indictment wind up being tossed out in the interests of getting a plea deal, thereby saving taxpayers the expense and bother of a trial.

Should either of these scenarios play out, the “Justice for Flash” movement is bound to feel like anything but justice was done; that there were no consequences; that dog lives still don’t matter in Alaska.

It would be a shame if this group, which has a worthwhile cause, should become disappointed, or worse — disillusioned.

It sounds like their hearts are in the right place. They just need to wait on a more appropriate case.