** 2/15/2016 UPDATE: Brent Justice has been sentenced to 50 years in prison. **
This is developing news and we will post updates as the case develops.
UPDATE: Brent Justice animal crush case. Two days ago, Feb 11th, the Houston man was found guilty of animal cruelty related to torture “crush” videos he produced with a woman, Ashley Richards, who previously pleaded guilty to the same crime and to whom we at Stopcrush.org had entered a sealed Amicus Brief to the Appeals Courtto ensure that the law and the charges against her would be upheld, to which she was found guilty.
Brent Justice’s sentencing is to be scheduled by Harris County District Judge Jay Bennett. He faces a minimum of 25 years in prison.
Via the Houston Press:
“The verdict came after the judge viewed a video of the slow torture of a puppy by Justice’s co-defendant, Ashley Richards. Justice, who is representing himself, admitted to police in 2012 that he recorded the act, and he was unable to suppress the confession in a pre-trial hearing Monday. In the video, Justice’s arm — with a distinctive birthmark — can be seen placing a large knife on the ground for Richards to use on the struggling pit bull puppy.
Justice showed no emotion while the video — more than ten minutes long — was played; yawning at one point near the beginning, and then reviewing some documents, just glancing intermittently until the video’s final, and most gruesome, few minutes. That’s when he stared intently.”
Please Note:
We cannot, thus far, post ANY of the articles that go along with this news, as all the media articles about this case, thus far, show images of animal crush, which falls under exemption for journalistic purposes and does not violate the law we worked so hard to get passed. However, it is extremely disappointing to us that the media outlets who are reporting on this case and some animal rights organisations are so openly using the exemption by posting images of animal crush on their social and websites and blog sites with relation to this case. We ask that you have respect for the intent of the law and respect for the animals who died horrific deaths. We do not feel it was necessary to post the images in relation to the cases, as they could have used a black bar to edit out the disturbing portions of the images and still made your points and clicks on your articles.
~ The Team at Stopcrush.org
