Judge declares Jasper County vicious animal ordinance unconstitutional, orders four dogs released

Stephen Gruber-Miller | The Des Moines Register

Show Caption Hide Caption Confined dog is reunited with owner after two years Pinky's former owner, Quinten Bickel, is reunited with his dog after she was under the custody of the city for two years.

A Jasper County judge has ruled that the county's vicious animal ordinance is unconstitutional and ordered the release of four dogs that were previously deemed "vicious."

The dogs, Sadie, Mia, Dipstick (known as Dippy) and Buster, were ordered released by Jasper County within 48 hours of District Court Judge Martha Mertz's Aug. 13 ruling.

The Jasper County Animal Control and Welfare board previously found the four dogs vicious and ordered them to be "humanely destroyed" after it determined they killed a Jack Russell Terrier and injured a Rottweiler belonging to a neighbor and sent two people to the hospital for emergency medical treatment, Mertz wrote in her order.

One of the injured people was David Alan Woody, who later filed the lawsuit challenging the dogs' designation as vicious animals. He suffered permanent impairment of two of his fingers. Also injured was the neighbor, who suffered a severe bite wound, according to the order.

The case began in August 2016 and has lasted two years. Mertz previously upheld the Jasper County ordinance as constitutional, but wrote that an April decision by the Iowa Court of Appeals caused her to reconsider her ruling.

"To say this case has been in a procedural quagmire is an understatement," Mertz wrote.

The appeals court ruling found Des Moines' vicious animal ordinance unconstitutionally vague as applied to Pinky the dog, who was confined by the Animal Rescue League for over two years after attacking a cat in a neighbor's yard. She was released to her owner following the ruling. Since district courts are bound by higher court precedent, Mertz wrote that she had to follow the appeals court's reasoning.

"The court concludes it must follow the reasoning and rationale adopted in that decision," she wrote.

Des Moines' ordinance was more explicit than Jasper County's, leading Mertz to conclude that the Jasper County ordinance is unconstitutionally vague, in violation of the due process provisions in the U.S. and Iowa constitutions.

Those provisions lay out that to be provided due process, people of ordinary intelligence must have "fair notice" of what behavior is forbidden by a law or ordinance.

Jasper County's ordinance states that a vicious animal is "any animal that demonstrates a propensity without provocation to attack or bite human beings or domestic animals."

Two bites or attacks within a 12-month period is enough to earn an animal a "vicious" designation, Mertz wrote, but the animal control board can still deem an animal vicious after holding a hearing even if the "two-bite rule" is not met.

"The ordinance lacks criteria for determining viciousness" other than the two-bite rule, Mertz wrote. And that lack of criteria leaves it open for an animal control officer to determine what is or isn't a violation of the ordinance, which could lead to arbitrary enforcement.

"While it may seem obvious when four dogs kill a neighbor’s dog, injure another dog

and cause two human owners to seek emergency medical treatment, the dogs are vicious; the ordinance does not say that," Mertz wrote. "More importantly, the ordinance does not set out criteria allowing the Board to reach that conclusion based on objective evidence."