Odin and Lucy are home at last. After thirteen long months of being behind bars at the Anne Arundel County Animal Control without access to the outdoors—even to relieve themselves— the wrongfully convicted pair of beloved family pets have been granted their freedom.
The county has been under fire since the news of their wrongful conviction broke. The dogs were accused of killing a cat named Big Boy, but the only witness submitted two conflicting unsigned and unverified statements and didn’t show up for the trial. Despite that, the county convicted the dogs anyway. At the time, the dogs’ owners, Nola Lowman and William Dillon, did not have an attorney. But they hired two attorneys, Ed Middlebrooks and Stephanie Kimbrell, to appeal the ruling. Kimbrell and Middlebrooks worked tirelessly to free the dogs, fighting with a reticent county every step of the way.
PJ Media reported the details of how the dogs were incarcerated and the corrupted administrative process that did it to them in January. A circuit court judge ruled that the county did not prove its case against Odin and Lucy and remanded it back to the county to try again. Administrative law in Maryland is not like criminal law where a situation like this would reverse the order and set the accused immediately free. Even with the ruling that the county screwed up, the dogs remained behind bars.
Middlebrooks and Kimbrell were determined to retry the case and free the dogs with the evidence they had showing a wild coyote was stalking cats in the neighborhood where Big Boy died. At least four other cats were killed while Odin and Lucy were behind bars. Lucy and Odin’s story gained much attention from local and national press.
Possibly to avoid more bad press, the county reached out to the attorneys and settled the case, agreeing to downgrade the dogs’ status from vicious to dangerous and allowing them to go home with restrictions that include being muzzled in public and requiring the owners to install a complicated fencing system among other demands. The family ended up paying the county over $700 to get their dogs back, having to pay a portion of the costs of their care while incarcerated.
Lowman and Dillon were desperate to have their beloved pets home and agreed to pay the exorbitant fees. Attorney Kimbrell told PJ Media that many people in the community were to thank for the victory. “Countless attorney hours have been put in since August of 2021 to get these dogs home,” she said. “We want to thank Wendy Cozzone of Cheryl’s Rescue Ranch for all the support she has offered the family, all of the funds she has raised to help bring the dogs home and all of the hours of work she has put in.”
Cozzone, who sits on the Animal Welfare Council and has worked with Anne Arundel County in animal rescue for thirty years, was instrumental in the support of the family and a tireless advocate for the dogs. “We also want to thank Amey Silkworth for compiling a petition with the signatures of almost 5,000 people which she delivered to the County Executive’s Office at the end of January,” Kimbrell continued. “Their voices and the voices of others who called his office nonstop were finally heard.”
Odin and Lucy are home! Dogs freed from death row! #FreeOdinandLucy https://t.co/G4ykWDOpcW pic.twitter.com/NXS2hStUOw
— No, not THAT Megan Fox 🦊 (@MeganFoxWriter) February 19, 2022
County Executive Steuart Pittman quickly put out a press release taking credit for the dogs’ release claiming to have called county attorneys asking for them to free the dogs. If he did that, the family had no indication of it. The county fought hard right up until the last minute on Friday to keep the dogs in jail, including failing the family’s fence inspection more than once. Minutes before the dogs were supposed to be released, the county was still refusing to deem the fence safe, worrying Lowman that the county would close before the permission would be granted and she would be kept from her dogs for the whole weekend.
Then, as Lowman and Cozzone waited to pick up Odin from the vet where he had mandated neutering surgery, the county informed the office they were not allowed to release Odin without a muzzle and an approved harness, which the family did not have. Lowman’s attorney had to intervene with the county’s attorney at the last minute to get the county to allow the post-operative dog to walk a few feet to the car without the muzzle and harness.
Pittman also claimed that there was nothing he could have done while the case was in court saying, “With lawyers engaged and a court date set, I had no choice but to await the ruling.” But is that true?
“Cases can be settled at any time during litigation,” Kimbrell told PJ Media.
Kimbrell sent PJ Media footage of the maddening process of picking up Odin.
What made this situation even more absurd is the fact that when the county took Odin to the vet for his mandated surgery, the animal control employee Officer Simpson did not have the dog muzzled or in a harness, and photographs prove it. For all the concern by the county for the public and demanding that Odin be muzzled in public at all times, the county’s own employees don’t follow their own rules. Officer Simpson was the same employee who told attorneys that the “vicious” dogs were not even allowed outside for almost a year because of the danger to the public they supposedly posed. But the way Simpson behaved with the dog belies that claim.
The family credits their attorneys and the other members of the public and media who helped them draw attention to this miscarriage of justice. Pittman wasn’t one of them. “Wendy Cozzone has been with me since day one,” Lowman told PJ Media. “I am so grateful to my attorneys, Ed Middlebrooks and Stephanie Kimbrell,” she continued. “And all the others that helped and supported us through this ordeal.”
As for Pittman, Lowman only had one thing to say. “The race had run. Why get on the horse now?”
Cozzone had a message for Pittman too. “I appreciate his help but I sure wish it had been a year ago so these dogs and family had not suffered.”
But politicians will do what politicians do and take any opportunity to get positive press, which the local CBS affiliate seemed happy to give him without fact-checking his claims.
“We are glad that after our victory in the Circuit Court the County Attorney’s office called to settle the case,” said Kimbrell. “We wish that had happened much earlier as it is abundantly clear Odin and Lucy are not vicious or dangerous but rather two of the nicest dogs I’ve ever met,” she continued. “Something in the system in Anne Arundel County Animal Control needs to change so a travesty like this never happens again.”
Cozzone accompanied the dogs home from Animal Control and said “Lucy was running around in the yard almost as if she was screaming ‘I’M FREE!’ and Odin was twisting, turning, and jumping. He was beside himself,” she said. “Both of them went into the house right to their favorite spots.”
Cozzone says that the family was terribly wronged by the system. “Odin and Lucy and the family have been put through pure hell for 13 months. It was a long hard battle, but when I saw those two dogs walk through the door and they saw their family it made every minute worth it,” she said. “These dogs and that family were wronged and it’s time for big changes.”
PJ Media obtained exclusive footage of Lucy and Odin reuniting with their family for the first time in over a year.
Source: PJ Media
