by Judy Frank
posted January 18, 2007
A Marion County detective spent a second day on the witness stand Thursday, as the attorney defending Joan Annette Mobley flashed individual photos of the dozens of animals prosecutors say she abused and demanded to know how each particular animal had been mistreated.
Hour after hour, sheriff’s Detective Gene Hargis peered at the photos of animals rescued from the Perry Link Memorial Humane Animal Society in 2005.
Some of the 68 animals, such as one dog with a deformed double tongue, stand out in his memory, he told jurors. Others do not.
Defense attorney Jes Beard, contending that Detective Hargis is incompetent and mishandled the Mobley investigation, demanded to know how he can say the animals were abused when he cannot even remember them.
Detective Hargis ticked off his reasons. There was no edible food or clean water for the animals at Perry Link, he recalled. The floor in the building was covered with feces mingled with maggots and worms. The building itself was extremely hot, unventilated and foul smelling. Flies were everywhere, drawn by the feces and the bodies of dead animals left to decay inside the building, and were “all over the animals.” And some animals were confined in carriers so small they could neither stand up nor turn around.
The defense attorney was unimpressed.
During a break in testimony, he told reporters he anticipates the trial will last another week and a half and predicted that, at its conclusion, jurors will acquit his client of all charges.
He said he intends to make several of the total 15 prosecution witnesses go through photos of the 68 Perry Link animals one by one, tell where and under what conditions each individual animal was confined, and explain how it was abused.
The process will be lengthy and tedious for jurors, he conceded, but “I’ll wake them up once in a while.”
Detective Hargis, on the witness stand, answered a seemingly endless series of questions – many of them over and over.
The detective agreed, as he had during lengthy questioning on Wednesday, that he has never questioned Ms. Mobley about day-to-day operations at Perry Link and who was responsible for what at the shelter. Since she was represented by an attorney, he said, it would have been unethical to do so.
Isn’t it true that part of his reason for not attempting to question Ms. Mobley was that his prior dealings with Mr. Beard had been unpleasant, the defense attorney asked the detective.
Yes, Detective Hargis said frankly. “My impression of you was that you are a bully.”
Circuit Judge Thomas W. Graham – who spent the day refereeing disputes between prosecution and defense attorneys, urging them not to ask questions that had already been asked and answered, and refusing to let them introduce evidence that was not relevant – suggested that the lawyers put the issue of whether the detective should have questioned Ms. Mobley to rest.
“Can we stipulate to the jury that there is no issue regarding Detective Hargis’ competence?” the judge suggested. “There is nothing that is incompetent about an investigator stopping his questioning of a defendant once he believes an attorney is involved.”
Mr. Beard refused.
“(Detective Hargis) is incompetent,” he told the judge.
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