UPI.com: Judge nixes plea deal in cat killing

 

Judge nixes plea deal in cat killing

 

 

A technicality forced a judge to reject a plea agreement offered to a 17-year-old girl charged with burning a cat in an oven, New York prosecutors said.

 

 

Cheyenne Cherry had pleaded guilty and accepted a deal for one year in prison for animal cruelty in the May 6 fatal burning of her former roommate’s cat, Tiger Lily, The New York Post reported Tuesday.

 

 

Bronx County Supreme Court Judge Margaret Clancy Monday withdrew the agreement after determining it was illegal to reduce a violent felony charge to a non-violent charge, The Post reported.

 

 

Prosecutors offered a new agreement in which Cherry could plead guilty to animal cruelty in exchange for two years in prison.

 

 

Cherry’s lawyer, Danielle Follette, accused prosecutors of succumbing to pressure from animal rights activists who were following the proceedings.

 

 

Cherry next is to appear in court Dec. 2.

 

 

via UPI.com: Judge nixes plea deal in cat killing.

 

via UPI.com: Judge nixes plea deal in cat killing.

A Celebration, Washington Heights Style

clipped from bats.blogs.nytimes.com A Celebration, Washington Heights Style By John Branch As Champagne celebrations go, the best one after the Yankees won the World Series might have been the one on the sidewalk of 191st Street in Washington Heights. Washington Heights is a huge enclave of baseball-crazy Dominican immigrants near the northern tip of Manhattan — and just about two miles from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. It is hard to imagine any New York neighborhood as passionate about baseball in general, and about the Yankees in particular. Dozens of people had converged on the O.N.F. — the nickname residents on the block conferred for the “One-Nine-First” — to watch Game 6 on a small flat-screen television set up on a broken-down stand. With the Yankees holding a lead over the Phillies throughout the brisk evening, the numbers grew. Money was pooled together. A couple in the group, mostly teenage and 20-something men, left to buy toilet paper and Champagne.