Petition to revoke probation dismissed for animal cruelty offender

A Lincoln County woman originally charged with eight felony and one misdemeanor animal cruelty charge has been referred back to Adult Probation and Parole after a petition to revoke was dismissed July 2 in Montana 19th Judicial District Court.

Cathie Warren faced the revocation after allegations of multiple violations of the terms of her suspended sentence, including possession of a cat and two kittens as well as goats in a pen on her property.

Warren was sentenced June 6, 2017, to eight, two-year consecutive suspended sentences for the felonies and an additional consecutive six months for the misdemeanor. She was also ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and $67,432.42 in restitution to the county for the care and sheltering of the 67 dogs and six donkeys associated with the charges.

For the length of her suspended sentence, Warren was prohibited from owning any animals or having any animals on her property. Judge Matt Cuffe did allow for her husband, Michael Odegaard, to keep a puppy he owned, but it was to remain always in his control, staying with him when he went to work or traveled rather than be left in the care of Warren.

Lincoln County Probation Officer Darrell Vanderhoef, who investigated the violations, said the situation wound up in court in part because of a change in Montana law regarding probation violations that is less than a year old.

Contributing to that was some confusion regarding Warren’s living situation and relationship with Odegaard, her estranged husband, Vanderhoef said.

Odegaard also had weapons in the home in a locked room, and having firearms in her residence would be a violation of Warren’s suspended sentence.

Around January of this year, Adult Probation switched to the Montana Incentives Intervention Grid, the product of legislation that was passed last year, Vanderhoef said. In addition, the legislation also introduced a differentiation between compliance and noncompliance violations.

For a compliance violation, Adult Probation uses the grid to determine interventions to take at the local level, Vanderhoef said. The intent is to assure all possible interventions have been exhausted before someone is sent back to jail for a violation.

But, in Warren’ss case, the grid had nothing that applied as an intervention for the alleged violations, he said. After consulting with his supervisor in Kalispell, he referred the case for revocation because there seemed to be no other options.

The system is new, Vanderhoef said, and there will likely be changes and revisions to address issues officers encounter on the ground, such as the one with Warren’s case. In addition, probation officers and the courts are still learning and becoming more familiar with the grid system for compliance violations.

“In this case, it didn’t work,” Vanderhoef said of the grid system and the lack of applicable interventions. “It’s getting a little bit better, but we’re still ironing out the wrinkles.”

The new system may have been intended to make things more consistent across the state, he said. But, he also pointed at that having a person on community supervision through probation costs a small fraction each day of what it does to keep them in prison.

Warren spent 10 days in jail after being picked up for violating her suspended sentence. Vanderhoef said he does not expect she will face any additional consequences for the violations she was brought in on.

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“The goal, and what we’ve achieved with probation, [is that] she cannot get to where she was before,” said Deputy Lincoln County Attorney Jeffrey Zwang.

In Warren’s case, the issue had less to do with cruel intent toward animals, and more with her inability to use good judgment about how many animals she is able to care for, Zwang said. For someone like that, the community benefits from making certain she isn’t keeping animals, but it isn’t necessary to have her in prison to achieve that.

It is rare in Montana to see someone go to prison for this type of offense, he said. And regardless the method, the intent is to solve the problem, not just punish the offender.

“Generally, our goal is rehabilitation by changing the behavior that resulted in criminal charges,” Zwang said. “In this case, as with many others, supervised probation serves that goal, as well as the goal of protecting public interests and safety, by preventing that behavior in the future.”

Warren is paying for her charges of animal cruelty in the form of the $67,432.42 restitution, he said. And, with Adult Probation watching her, she won’t be able to accumulate animals for which she cannot care.

Zwang said that in many cases there is a period of adjustment to being on probation. The expectation is that an offender will demonstrate changed behaviors as probation goes on, but it is expected they will make mistakes and have to be guided back on course.

Vanderhoef said that interventions for a violation can range from verbally chastising an offender to — depending on the charges associated with the probation and the violation behaviors — sending them to a clinic for treatment.

For many violations, the current system requires the officers to go through multiple steps — exhausting all their other options — before someone goes back to jail, he said.