An assistant district attorney couldn't contain his laughter in court yesterday while reading a suspect's statement about how she kicked her dog unconscious for relieving itself in a building elevator. "He was laughing and had to turn away because he couldn't control the laughter," said Legal Aid attorney, Stacy Schneider, who is defending suspected animal abuser Tiara Davis. "I didn't see any humor in the statement."
According to the Daily News, Assistant District Attorney Steven Constantiner started giggling while reading a part of Davis' statement describing why she kicked her four-year-old Pomeranian, named Sparky. A spokesman for the District Attorney's Office called Constantiner a "fine young lawyer," and said he "laughed briefly and unexpectedly while reading to the court the vulgarities the defendant used in her statement to police." Constantiner declined to comment.
Davis—who was the second person caught on tape abusing pooches in elevators in the Grant Houses in Morningside Heights—has pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor animal-cruelty charges that could carry a jail sentence of up to a year. Davis' lawyer denies that her client, a vocational counselor to ex-offenders, made any statements to police. But prosecutors claim she said: "It wasn't like I was killing him or anything like that. I mean I wasn't gonna really hurt him."
Sparky has reportedly been put up for adoption.
