Tom R. Smedes / AP, file
Assembly Minority Leader P.K. O’Neill, shown Feb. 6 during the opening session of the 2023 Nevada Legislature in Carson City, is cosponsoring a bill that would classify offenders in some animal cruelty cases as a violent offender, ineligible for early release from prison.
Sunday, March 12, 2023 | 3 a.m.
Nevada Legislature
The notion that someone convicted in the sadistic killing of seven dogs could be eligible for an early release from prison in Nevada was too much for Assemblyman P.K. O’Neill to bear without doing something.
O’Neill, the Assembly’s Republican leader from Carson City, said the case of Jason Brown of Reno was the genesis of Assembly Bill 159, which would reclassify certain animal abuse charges as violent crimes and make those offenders in Nevada ineligible for credits accrued for earning a reduced sentence or early parole.
Brown in 2015 pleaded no contest to seven felony counts of maiming, poisoning or killing another person’s animal. Brown had been sentenced to up to 28 years in prison for what O’Neill called the “most disturbing” instance of animal abuse the state has ever encountered.
But media reports surfaced last March that Brown, who was not supposed to be parole-eligible until 2025, was up for early release. Because his crimes involved dogs — and not people — Brown was classified as a nonviolent offender. That meant he was eligible to earn credits, such as for good behavior in prison, which allowed him to become eligible for early parole.
The nonviolent offender label belied what had come to light during Brown’s sentencing hearing eight years ago. At the time, the original owners of some of the dogs testified that they sold puppies to Brown because he seemed like a normal clean-cut kid when he responded to their ads on Craigslist. They cried in the courtroom as a judge watched videotapes of Brown torturing and skinning the dogs.
The images weren’t visible to the court audience, but Brown could be heard on the audio telling friends he took the animals to his “house of pain” and wanted to turn them into a fur coat. Police found the heads of four dogs inside a mini-refrigerator at Brown’s Reno motel room.
“What he’s in prison for, I feel, is just a lead-up or precursor to a more violent crime,” O’Neill told the Sun in a phone interview Thursday. As a former police investigator of more than 40 years, O’Neill said he was aware that many murderers also had a history of maiming animals.
“The bottom line is a high percentage of them all had experiences with animal abuse,” he said.
O’Neill and 10 fellow Republicans, along with Las Vegas Democratic Venicia Considine, are cosponsoring AB159, which had a hearing earlier this month before the Assembly Judiciary Committee.
Jennifer Noble, chief deputy district attorney for Washoe County in Northern Nevada, told the committee members she supported O’Neill’s bill because the public had no way of knowing if a person had been convicted of animal cruelty, and they could work with children, the elderly and even alongside animals.
“This type of crime is undoubtedly underreported, because, of course, animals have no voice,” she said. “They have no way to seek help when they’re being abused. They are at our mercy, quite frankly.”
O’Neill stressed that the bill would not increase the penalty for animal torture, killing or mutilation, but would instead put those in the same classification as murder, attempted murder, high-level drug possession or felony DUI.
Likewise, it would only apply to new convicts moving forward; it won’t apply retroactively to Brown, who was denied an early release at his first parole hearing in May 2022.
He is still eligible for parole.
The bill garnered the support of Metro Police, the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office and the Nevada Sheriffs’ and Chiefs’ Association.
It’s also earned the endorsement of the Nevada Humane Society and the Humane Society of the United States.
Nobody testified in opposition.
The Assembly Judiciary Committee took no action on the bill.
