Cat-Killing Cop Jonathan N. Snoddy Struts Out of Court as Free as a Bird Thanks to a Carefully Choreographed Charade Concocted by Virginia's Despicable and Dishonest Legal System

Kenneth Leo Alger II

"And law is where you buy it in this town."
-- Raymond Chandler

Although the denouement of Harrisonburg police officer Jonathan N. Snoddy's retrial for savagely bludgeoning to death an injured cat on Settlers Lane last November 11th never was seriously in doubt, exactly what rôle special prosecutor Kenneth Leo Alger II of neighboring Page County ultimately would decide to play had attracted considerable speculation. To his and the law's eternal discredit, the four-eyed, duplicitous mythomaniac with an âme-de-boue turned in a performance that was so shameful that it will not soon be forgotten.

Nolle prosequi he told Judge James V. Lane of Rockingham County Circuit Court in Harrisonburg on July 30th. With that absurdity now entered in the law books, the cat-killing monster Snoddy strutted out of court as a free man with his dirty schnoz poked so high in the air that he surely would have drowned in a dry drizzle.

Back on March 8th, as it may be recalled, Judge Steven Helvin of Rockingham County General District Court had convicted him of one count of misdemeanor animal cruelty and fined him a piddling $50. Even meting out that infinitesimal fine nearly broke old Helvin's heart.

"It's difficult for a judge to second-guess law enforcement," this supposedly impartial trier of facts candidly admitted from the bench. "(But) I think the way he killed the cat was in violation. The way he killed the cat was unnecessary." (See Cat Defender post of March 22, 2012 entitled "In Another Outrageous Miscarriage of Justice, Rogue Cop Jonathan N. Snoddy Is Let Off with a $50 Fine for Savagely Bludgeoning to Death an Injured Cat.")

In electing to not even contest Snoddy's appeal, Alger not only outdid Helvin but managed to accomplish what only a few months ago would have been thought to be impossible by unwittingly rehabilitating his tarnished reputation to the point that where he now faintly resembles a halfway respectable jurist. If he had stopped there that would have been disgraceful enough but he went on to malign the initial prosecution of Snoddy as having been motivated by "misinformation and sensationalism."

The devil is always in the details and and it is precisely Alger's willingness to twist the truth in order to suit his jaundiced agenda that reveals his total lack of integrity. "I think that putting the cat out of his misery immediately was the most humane thing to do as a result of the animal's broken spine and other internal injuries," he told the court according to the July 31st account of the proceedings rendered in the Daily News-Record of Harrisonburg. (See "Cat-Beating Case Against Cop Thrown Out.") "As such, I do not feel his actions rise to the level of criminal conviction of animal cruelty. It is my belief that under the urgency of the situation and the lack of specific guidelines and training, Officer Snoddy was acting to the best of his abilities."

First of all and as Alger no doubt is acutely aware Snoddy had been convicted of misdemeanor animal cruelty under section 3.2-6570(A) of the Code of Virginia and accordingly his reliance upon the legal standard for criminal animal cruelty as a justification for not proceeding against him is totally spurious. Secondly, the only urgency in this matter was procuring prompt emergency veterinary care for the injured cat and that is something that never so much as once entered into the self-proclaimed cat-lover's desiccated gourd.

Dying, on the other hand, is easy and can be done at any time. Moreover, it is the very pinnacle of hypocrisy for inveterate cat-haters like Snoddy and Alger to claim that they cared so much about this forever nameless feline that they could not stand to allow it to go on breathing for another second.

Thirdly, Alger is lying when he states that the Harrisonburg Police Department (HPD) did not have any guidelines in situ in order to deal with such a contingency. Specifically, under the department's draconian rules Snoddy could have shot the cat.

Fourthly, Alger's assertion that the cat likely died from a single blow that Snoddy administered with his night stick is directly contradicted by the assailant's own testimony at his first trial where he admitted to striking it three or four times. Much more importantly, resident Wayne Meadows, who rescued the cat and then telephoned the police, overheard up to twenty blows being struck on his front porch.

Both Snoddy and Alger ludicrously maintain that the additional thumps overheard by Meadows were the result of the officer attempting to close his collapsible night stick. Based upon the prodigious amount of blood left behind and the damage done to Meadows' porch, Snoddy likely bashed the cat's head against the rock work numerous times after beating it to a bloody pulp with his baton. It strains credulity that it would take a veteran policeman like Snoddy nineteen attempts to close his night stick but that is precisely what Alger would like the world to believe.

Like the Pentagon with its diabolical arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, cops love nothing better than to beat up on animals and powerless individuals and that is especially the case when there are not any witnesses present. "There is plenty of law at the end of a night stick," Grover Aloysius Whalen, who served as corrupt New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker's police commissioner from 1928-1930, once proudly boasted.

True to his word, he sicced one-thousand of his goons on thirty-five-thousand International Unemployment Day marchers on March 6, 1930. Using night sticks, blackjacks, and their fists, the cops and detectives had a field day beating up on the peaceful demonstrators and that ultimately led to Whalen's firing two months later.

Also, Alger's reference to the cat's broken spine and other internal injuries is the first time that the authorities even have admitted that a necropsy was performed on it. Generally speaking, whenever a policeman kills a cat he normally deposits its corpse in the nearest trash can and that is the last that is ever seen of it.

That is precisely what the police in Cecil, Pennsylvania, Raymore, Missouri, and Lebanon, Ohio, did with Elmo, Tobey, and Haze, respectively, after murdering them. (See Cat Defender posts of March 31, 2008, September 16, 2009, and September 22, 2011 entitled, respectively, "Cecil, Pennsylvania, Police Officer Summarily Executes Family's Beloved Ten-Year-Old Persian, Elmo," "Acting Solely Upon the Lies of a Cat-Hater, Raymore Police Pump Two Shotgun Blasts into the Head of Nineteen-Year-Old Declawed and Deaf Tobey," and "Neanderthaloid Politicians in Lebanon, Ohio, Wholeheartedly Sanction the Illegal and Cold-Blooded Murder of Haze by a Trigger-Happy Cop.")

Accordingly, if a necropsy does exist the results should be released to the public. Even more importantly, since no one within Virginia's totally dishonest political and legal establishment is to be trusted, a second necropsy should have been performed by an independent pathologist.

If against all odds the cat's remains still exist, such an inquiry might go a long way towards explaining the blood left on Meadows' porch. After all, spinal cords and internal injuries usually do not bleed externally.

A Contemplative Wayne Meadows Sits on the Steps of His Town House

In his much celebrated Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defines a liar as "a lawyer with a roving commission" and that certainly fits the peripatetic Alger perfectly. He is, however, far from being the only Virginian responsible for the farce that masqueraded as justice and was meted out on July 30th.

The trail of complicity begins with the Virginia State Bar which prevailed upon the office of Rockingham County District Attorney Marsha Garst, which prosecuted the first case, to recuse itself in favor of a special prosecutor. This was done ostensibly in order to eliminate the blatant conflict of interest that exists between all prosecutors and cops.

For reasons that never have been publicly explained, Lane then selected Alger to handle Snoddy's appeal. Whether he was operating on explicit instructions from the Bar is unclear, but there can be no denying that Alger long has been one of the fraternity's darlings. In fact, it awarded him its Service Award in 2007.

Lane's simply stupefying acceptance without demur of Alger's nolle prosequi lends additional credence to the supposition that Snoddy's acquittal was a prearranged, put-up deal cleverly orchestrated by the Bar, Alger, and Lane from the very beginning. Otherwise, it does not make any sense for Lane to have dismissed a case that he took the extraordinary step of personally selecting a special prosecutor to try in his own courtroom. Moreover, by his acceptance of Alger's abdication of duty he demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he does not have any business umpiring so much as a friendly game of checkers let alone donning a black robe and pretending to dispense justice from the bench.

After all, the facts in this case have been well-known from the outset and are not in dispute. Furthermore, it is not as if some startling new piece of evidence recently had come to light. (See Cat Defender post of April 26, 2012 entitled "Virginia's Disreputable Legal and Political Establishment Is All Set to Acquit Jonathan N. Snoddy at His Retrial for Brutally Beating to Death an Injured Cat.")

The pleadings in this case, as far as they can be deciphered in their abbreviated online versions, also tend to support the theory that Alger, Lane, and the Bar conspired from the very start to pull the wool over the eyes of ailurophiles by stringing out this case for as long as possible until the latter grew tired of it and no longer cared one way or the other how it was resolved. The long chain of events that culminated in Snoddy's acquittal began on March 9th when his shysters filed his appeal. Lane then appointed Alger to try the case shortly thereafter.

The nearest that the date of Alger's selection can be pinpointed comes courtesy of the Daily News-Record which on April 7th stated that he had been "recently" appointed. (See "HPD Officer's Trial Delayed.")

The first of several continuance orders was issued on March 12th and that was followed by a witness subpoena request on March 23rd which was promptly returned on March 27th. The target of the subpoena is not named but it very well could have been Meadows.

The contending parties were back in Lane's courtroom on March 28th concerning a preliminary transcript and that was followed by additional continuances issued on April 9th, May 23rd, and May 31st. In a clear harbinger of what was to transpire a few days later, the assembling of a potential jury pool was waived off on July 20th.

Snoddy's ambulance chasers were anything but gracious in victory; au contraire, they were the very epitomes of smugness and conceit. "It was a bit of a rush to judgment at the beginning of the case," John C. Holloran told WHSV-TV of Harrisonburg on July 31st. (See "Cruelty Case Against Police Officer Ends.") "Once he (Alger) had an opportunity to analyze the facts, and the autopsy (sic) of the cat, he realized there was not a substantive case and that's why he dismissed it."

That is hardly the case in that it certainly did not take Alger and Lane five months in order to arrive at that illogical and unjust conclusion. To assume otherwise is to turn a blind eye to all logic and facts.

Furthermore, the Virginia State Police, which arrested Snoddy on January 12th, Garst's office, and even old Helvin should, if any of them were seized with even so much as an ounce of professional pride, feel insulted by Alger's and Lane's abhorrent dereliction of duty. The petit fait that none of them have uttered so much as a syllable of criticism is a pretty good indication that they agree wholeheartedly with what transpired on July 30th.

After all, the State Police only reluctantly investigated and arrested Snoddy and Garst's underling, Cristable Opp, prosecuted the first case with all the vigor of an eunuch turned loose for the night in a girls' college dormitory. As for old Helvin, he now can dry his eyes and put away his handkerchief because his beloved Snoddy has been cleared of all charges.

The most poignant impact of his excessive slobbering and weeping from the bench may have been to furnish Holloran's partner in this grotesque miscarriage of justice, Bill Eldridge, with the inspiration to improvise and deliver a heartfelt Liebesbrief of his own to the police. "It's a tough situation being an officer charged with a criminal offense," he boohooed to WHSV-TV in the article cited supra. "And to have to fight this case through a trial until today when he finally had a prosecutor realize that this was not a criminal offense that was committed."

Like his honey Alger, Eldridge is guilty of deliberately confounding misdemeanor and criminal animal cruelty. Also like his fellow hooligans within Virginia's thoroughly corrupt legal and political establishment, he never has expressed so much as an ounce of compassion for the murdered cat.

Contrary to Eldridge's self-serving drivel, being a cop is not all arduous and the job comes with almost unlimited perks. Being essentially ambitious and uneducated brutes, they are recruited by the capitalists and bourgeoisie in order to keep the working class, poor, and all dissidents in line.

Some of the Damage That Snoddy Did to Meadows' Porch

In addition to lining their pockets with graft and largess cadged from the public till, their biggest thrill comes from using their guns, truncheons, and Tasers on animals and those too impecunious in order to defend themselves in a court of law. Even on those rare occasions when they are caught flagrante delicto abusing their authority, such as was the case with Snoddy, their overlords within the legal and political establishment pull out all the stops in order to shield them from getting their just desserts.

What is difficult is being a defenseless cat in a society that steadfastly refuses to enforce the anti-cruelty statutes, especially against those in authority. In this case, the HPD never once has stirred so much as a muscle in an effort to apprehend the hit-and-run motorist who ran down the cat in the first place.

Newly installed Chief of Police Stephen Monticelli wasted no time in demonstrating that he is every bit as big of a defender of police lawlessness and a liar as his predecessor, Donald Harper. "Officer Snoddy is a valued member of the Harrisonburg Police Department," he proclaimed with a straight face to the Daily News-Record in the July 31st article cited supra. "He has been a good public servant and continues to serve this community well. He has my trust and confidence as we move beyond this incident."

No animal cruelty case ever could be complete without the twenty-four karat frauds and blowhards at PETA putting in their two cents' worth of lies, hypocrisy, and just plain gibberish. "We're grateful to the Good Samaritan who picked up this poor cat on the side of the road," the organization's Daphna Nachminovitch told WHSV-TV in the article cited supra. "And to the police department, for taking this seriously and implementing policies to prevent such tragedies from recurring."

Nachminovitch, as some will recall, is the supervisor of PETA's death squads that scour southern Virginia and eastern North Carolina in search of cats and dogs to liquidate. In 2007, two of her underlings, Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook, were exposed as obtaining at least eighty-two dogs and seventeen cats under false pretenses from shelters. They later gassed all of them in their vans and, in order to save money on cremation, dumped their corpses in a Dumpster outside a Piggly Wiggly Supermarket in Ahoskie.

"There were no intentions of cruelty, only good intentions to help animals which these two young people have dedicated their lives to," this demented dame told the court at their subsequent trial. (See Cat Defender posts of January 29, 2007 and February 9, 2007 entitled, respectively, "PETA's Long History of Killing Cats and Dogs Is Finally Exposed in North Carolina Courtroom" and "Verdict in PETA Trial: Littering Is a Crime but Not the Mass Slaughter of Innocent Cats and Dogs.")

Once her brainwashed acolytes successfully had eluded justice, Nachminovitch was crowing like a bantam rooster at sunup. "I feel justice was served," she bellowed. "We can now put this behind us and get on with our good work."

By that she obviously was referring to the rounding up and systematic killing of additional cats and dogs. (See Cat Defender post of October 7, 2011 entitled "PETA Traps and Kills a Cat and Then Shamelessly Goes Online in Order to Brag About Its Criminal and Foul Deed.")

Since PETA's antipathy toward cats is so extensively documented, the capitalist media's habit of constantly turning to it to speak up for the species is tantamount to their calling upon Jack the Ripper every time that a woman is murdered to offer up a few pointers on how best to slit a throat. At the same time the media have completely shunned Meadows who not only came to the injured cat's rescue but testified on its behalf and at his own expense in court. His opinion on this miscarriage of justice would be worth a million times more than anything that PETA has to say.

The only halfway sane response to Alger's and Lane's abhorrent judicial misconduct has come from Alley Cat Allies (ACA). "We are shocked and disappointed at a decision by a special prosecutor in Page County, Virginia, to dismiss on appeal the conviction of a Harrisonburg police officer who had been found guilty of animal cruelty in March for beating to death an injured stray cat," the organization's Becky Robinson stated in a July 30th press release. (See "Alley Cat Allies Responds to Dismissal of Officer's Conviction at Virginia Cat-Beating Case.") "We appreciate that this officer was investigated and then prosecuted, but in reality he received an anemic punishment for a heinous crime, and now even that punishment has been vacated."

The organization went on to point out that Snoddy did not make any effort whatsoever to ascertain ownership of the cat and employed lethal force as the only option without exploring any humane alternatives. For his actions, he was eligible to receive up to a year in jail and a fine of $2,500.

Despite Nachminovitch's sottise about how the HPD has mended its evil ways, considerable confusion remains concerning its policies toward animals. According to what Alger told Lane on July 30th, officers in the future will transport "dying" animals to Shenandoah Valley Regional Veterinary Emergency Services in Verona, thirty kilometers south of Harrisonburg, so that they can be dispatched to the devil via lethal injections.

Since such an odious and patently inhumane plan does not even take into consideration the possibility of providing them with emergency veterinary care and thus saving their lives, it immediately can be understood why PETA finds it to be so appealing. Like the HPD and the city of Harrisonburg, the fraudsters from Norfolk are far too miserly and mean-spirited to spend so much as a sou on legitimate veterinary care. In reality, the HPD and PETA are kindred spirits who travel the same rocky road at the end of which there is only an incinerator filled with the corpses cats and dogs that they have murdered.

Alger also informed Lane that members of the HPD would receive additional training from the Rockingham-Harrisonburg SPCA (RHSPCA) and that they would be provided with not only its mobile telephone number but that of Animal Control as well to be used in emergencies. As it may be recalled, both of those agencies as well as several unidentified local veterinarians turned deaf ears to kindhearted Meadows' pleas for assistance back on November 11th.

If any of them had done their jobs on that occasion this tragedy never would have escalated into an international cause célèbre. Deplorably, the cat would still be just as dead even if any of them had intervened because it is highly improbable that they would have acted to save its life.

It accordingly is impossible to see how that these revised guidelines are any improvement over the department's old regimen. Above all, they continue to demonstrate an appalling contempt for the sanctity of all animal life.

That point has not been lost on Robinson. "There were procedures supposedly in place before this incident to prevent this, yet this cruelty still occurred," she pointed out in the press release cited supra. "We would like to hear from officials what specific procedural changes they've made since this incident to ensure it never happens again."

Stephen Monticelli

While Alger was busily blowing long and hard into Lane's ever obliging ear, Monticelli was playing his cards close to his vest. "When our policies for dealing with injured animals have been finalized all officers will be thoroughly trained so they understand them and can respond appropriately," he vowed to the Daily News-Record in the July 31st article cited supra. "It (Snoddy's murder of the cat) also has been a significant learning experience. And while it is closed in the courts, I want everyone to know that the Harrisonburg Police Department has been -- and will continue -- working to improve how we deal with matters of this nature."

Despite of all the glaring ambiguities and  unanswered questions, Alger felt compelled to take it upon itself to speak for the entire department. "This will not happen again," he boldly pledged to the Daily News-Record in the July 31st article cited supra.

That is another of his big, fat lies because he does not have any way of guaranteeing that. Besides, it already has happened again on April 3rd when Sergeant Russell Metcalf without provocation drew his service revolver and shot dead an eight-month-old collie-mix named Sadie after she ran across his path while he was out bicycling on Robinson Road. According to one eyewitness, the dog neither was acting aggressively nor threatening Metcalf in any way.

Despite the gravity of his offense, he was not arrested until six weeks later on May 18th when the Rockingham County Sheriff's Office charged him with one count of animal cruelty and one count of the reckless handling of a firearm. His case is scheduled to be heard at 2 p.m. today in Rockingham County General District Court.

The killing of innocent cats and dogs by the HPD thus continues unabated despite Alger's and Monticelli's protestations to the contrary. Furthermore, it would come as nothing short of a coup du foudre if Metcalf were to be either fined so much as a nickel or sentenced to spend even one night in jail.

Like Snoddy before him, he has been assigned to a desk job and continues to draw his full pay and benefits. (See Cat Defender post of July 18, 2012 entitled "The Bloodthirsty and Lawless Harrisonburg Police Follow Up Their Bludgeoning to Death of an Injured Cat by Gunning Down a Collie Named Sadie.")

As the result of his acquittal, Snoddy's killing of the injured cat ended up not costing him a red cent out of his own pocket. Although the Daily News-Record stated on July 31st that he would "be responsible for all the costs associated with his prosecution" that seems not only highly unlikely but ridiculous as well.

First of all, it is almost unheard of for even defendants who have been convicted to be ordered to pay for their prosecutions let alone those that have been exonerated. If that were the de rigueur, Snoddy would be on the hook for the salaries and expenses incurred by, inter alia, the Virginia State Police, the pathologist who conducted the necropsy, the Virginia State Bar, Garst's office, Alger, Helvin, Lane, and the staff at the two courts that handled his case. Sans doute, all of that would amount to considerably more than a cop like him could either earn or steal.

It also is extremely unlikely that he is picking up the tab for Holloran's and Eldridge's services. After all, he was acting under the color of law and with the full support of his superiors when he murdered the cat and under that scenario the financial liability for his lawless behavior falls squarely upon the shoulders of the HPD and the city of Harrisonburg.

According to Alger and the Daily News-Record, Snoddy recently completed an educational course at an unidentified SPCA and put in twenty-five hours of community service at a "local animal shelter." While not mentioning anything about his course work, WHSV-TV reported that his volunteer work was performed at the Augusta County SPCA in Staunton.

Even if true, that seems to be a rather odd arrangement because the Augusta County SPCA is located thirty-eight kilometers south of Harrisonburg whereas the RHSPCA is headquartered in the city. If Snoddy actually attended classes and performed volunteer work it seems more likely that he would have done both in Harrisonburg.

Even more revolting is the complicity of both the RHSPCA and the Augusta County SPCA in Snoddy's heinous crime. Instead of helping animal abusers to evade justice, it is the job of both organizations not only to prevent animal cruelty but to see to it that offenders are apprehended and punished.

In Virginia, however, humane groups have a long history of coddling cat abusers and killers. For example, on October 11, 2007, Judge Colleen Killilea of the Williamsburg-James City County District Court sentenced fifty-seven-year-old Norge sodbuster Donald Curtis Hunt to thirty days in jail, fined him $500, and ordered him to perform one-hundred hours of community service.

Like Snoddy, he appealed his conviction to the Williamsburg-James City County Circuit Court where on April 16, 2009 Judge Samuel T. Powell III reversed Killilea and cleared him of all charges. In court, he claimed to have performed an unspecified amount of community service and to have made an undisclosed contribution to the Heritage Humane Society of Williamsburg. (See Cat Defender posts of October 23, 2007 and May 14, 2009 entitled, respectively, "Virginia Does It Again! Farmer Who Drowned at Least Five Cats Gets Off with a Slap-on-the-Wrists" and "Virginia Is for Cat Killers, Not Lovers, Now That Its Legal Establishment Has Sanctioned Donald Curtis Hunt's Drowning of Five Kittens.")

Regardless of whether the venue is Williamsburg-James City, Harrisonburg, or some other judicial district in the state, the routine and the outcome is always the same in cases involving cruelty to cats. The defendant, whether he be a cop or a private citizen, shops around until he locates an obliging judge that will acquit him.

The Hideout of Cat and Dog Killers in Harrisonburg

Along the way he feigns to put in community service and to make a minuscule contribution to a humane group. These groups in turn willingly sell out their offices and the killing and abuse of cats continues as usual. That is not justice; it is theatre.

The coverage given Snoddy's case by both the Daily News-Record and and WHSV-TV can only be described as slipshod at best and downright subservient and gutless at its worst. Not only have these outlets barely kept the public informed as to the myriad of legal shenanigans that have transpired but they have failed miserly in their mission to delve behind the lies and facades and to get at the truth.

First of all, neither of them has pressed the HPD to reveal the results of its much ballyhooed internal investigation of Snoddy. Secondly, they have not insisted that the necropsy be made public.

Thirdly, they have not demanded that the HPD, as opposed to Alger, make public its new guidelines concerning exactly how it plans on treating injured animals. Fourthly, they have not called upon the HPD make any effort whatsoever in order to locate and apprehend the driver who ran down the cat and left it for dead.

Most important of all, instead of demanding that justice be meted out to Snoddy and that the animal cruelty statutes be strictly enforced, both outlets have chosen to deliberately protect his privacy by steadfastly refusing to publish so much as even a single photograph of him. It is hard to imagine either of them going to such extraordinary lengths in order to protect the privacy of a civilian charged with the same despicable crime. Cops should not be beyond the purview of the law but that most definitely is the case in Harrisonburg.

With the notable exceptions of Meadows and ACA, everyone connected with this sorry episode is guilty of aiding and abetting Snoddy to cheat justice. It is old sniveling Alger, however, who is the wormiest apple in a basket brimming over with rotters.

As a graduate of the notorious University of Georgia in Athens, whose greatest claim to fame is that it has given the world serial cat killer Nico Dauphiné, a rancher who raises cows for slaughter, and a police instructor, Alger did not have any business trying this case in the first place. His very appointment presaged the travesty of justice that has followed.

Unable to get his filthy hands on enough moola, he also teaches part-time at James Madison University (JMU) in Harrisonburg and in that light it would be interesting to know what he tells his wet-behind-the-ears students about animal cruelty, criminal cops, and prosecutors and judges who do not have so much as an ounce of either honesty or integrity in their decrepit old bones. In all probability, he emphatically denies the very existence of all of those evils.

Animal abuse is unquestionably a dead issue as far as the faculty and administration at JMU are concerned because if they cared so much as one whit about it they never would have hired a bum like Alger to propagandize the young and impressionable in the first place. By maintaining Alger on its faculty, JMU has joined the ranks of the College of the Mainland in Texas City, Texas, which a few years back welcomed with open arms serial cat killer James Munn Stevenson into its malignant bosom. (See Cat Defender post of August 7, 2008 entitled "Crime Pays! Having Made Fools Out of Galveston Prosecutors, Serial Cat Killer James Munn Stevenson Is Now a Hero and Laughing All the Way to the Bank.")

More generally speaking, cat abusers, exploiters, killers, and those who defend them, such as Alger, can always count on finding a safe harbor inside the halls of ivy. (See Cat Defender post of July 18, 2011 entitled "Evil Professors Have Transformed College Campuses into Hotbeds of Hatred Where Cats Routinely Are Vilified, Horribly Abused, and Systematically Killed.")

"And law is where you buy it in this town," Philip Marlowe remarked to Anne Riordan in Raymond Chandler's 1940 novel, Farewell, My Lovely. Leider, cats do not possess any of the godly green that all Americans so covet and as a consequence they never receive their due from the judicial system.

Justice therefore is reserved for those who can pay, members of the establishment, and those that have the backing of powerful interest groups. In America, even the worst villains are presumed to be innocent until proven broke and with Virginia's entire legal and political establishment supporting him all the way there never was any danger of Snoddy ever running out of money.

Nevertheless, all of those connected with Virginia's judicial system will be remembered not only for selling out but for doing so rather cheaply at that. Specifically, all of their myriad of lies, numerous subterfuges, insipid public posturing, and gross abuse of power were directed toward saving the career of a despicable monster who gets his perverted kicks by bashing out the brains of severely injured cats. Their reputations and futures are now forever inseparably intertwined with his.

For the time being, however, they can pat themselves on the back and bask in the warm glow of a job well done as they toss off their tumblers of bourbon and branch from inside the serenity of their posh country clubs. Their elation is destined to be short-lived, however, because this incident is neither going to go away nor be forgotten owing to the fact that at the end of the day injustice is still injustice, corruption is still corruption, and southern white trash, no matter how cleverly it attempts to conceal itself with the trappings of wealth, office, and prestige, is still nothing but southern white trash.

Photos: Facebook (Alger), WHSV-TV (Meadows and his damaged porch), Columbia Daily Tribune (Monticelli), and City of Harrisonburg (HPD's headquarters).