A man living in Quincy, Massachusetts, who illegally entered the U.S. from Poland, will be deported after serving a ten-year sentence for animal cruelty, a report says.
Radoslaw Czerkawski was sentenced to eight to ten years in prison for beating a puppy so badly that animal control officers had to euthanize it, Fox News reported.
Charged with 12 counts of animal cruelty, 36-year-old Czerkawski was eventually found guilty in the widely publicized “puppy doe” case. He was acquitted of a thirteenth charge of misleading police.
Officials said the dog suffered multiple broken bones, damage to its eyes, and a split tongue. It was so badly injured that it was euthanized a month after the attack.
The first veterinarian who treated the dog said she was shocked when she saw her patient for the first time.
“I remember opening the bag with her body in it, and my heart collapsed,” said Dr. Martha Smith-Blackmore, according to court documents. “It was immediately obvious this was beyond the pale. It was organized tactical torture. The first thing I did was pick up the phone and call the DA’s office and say, ‘We have a very sick and deranged person out there.'”
Rob Halpin, a spokesman for MSPCA-Angell, celebrated the verdict. “The Puppy Doe case is a whole new marker on the charts; it’s outside the bell curve in terms of the abhorrent level of cruelty, but we’re encouraged by its impact,” he told the Boston Herald:
The Polish native is also serving jail time on two unrelated larceny charges, and immigration officials have reported that he will be deported once his sentences have been served.
Czerkawski has also been sentenced to two years of probation after his sentence is served, but ICE officials noted that the probation term will not delay his deportation upon completion of the jail time.
The “puppy doe” case also had consequences in the state legislature, having led to the passage of the PAWS Act, a law which increased the maximum penalty for animal abuse from five to seven years.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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