Man caught punching dog in the face has sentence reduced as it was a ‘one off’

A man caught beating his dog in the face while in a public park has successfully appealed to have his sentence cut.

Robert Black, 51, was seen by a witness who called police in Victoria Park, Newbury, Berkshire, on December 21 last year.

He was given 23 weeks in prison after he was caught on CCTV punching the animal in a ‘deliberate and gratuitous attempt to cause suffering’.

Black was also banned from owning animals for ten years after the attack on the mixed-breed dog.

But he has now been told he only has to spend 17 weeks in jail, arguing that the offence was a ‘one off’.

He said he had been trying to separate two dogs during the incident.

Defence lawyer Steve Molloy said: ‘There’s no suggestion the dogs were undernourished or routinely ill-treated.

‘This was, in my submission, a one-off incident. It’s not in the league of dog fighting or dog baiting.’

He suggested the district judge who sentenced Black had erred in law by categorising the offence as ‘higher culpability’.

Mr Molloy conceded that his client had been subject to a suspended prison sentence at the time, but said this was for a totally unrelated offence.

He concluded: ‘Mr Black has now served a custodial sentence of some weeks and, in my respectful submission, the proper sentence would be one of time served.’

That would have allowed Black to walk free and spend Christmas with his partner, who accompanied him to court.

However, Judge Richard Wheeler pointed to Black’s 288 previous convictions for offences including battery, burglary, theft and being drunk and disorderly.

He said: ‘I’m perfectly satisfied it was correct in law to activate the five-week suspended sentence and to add a consecutive sentence for the current offence.’

He told Black: ‘You committed this offence less than a month after the suspended sentence and you have a lengthy and extremely depressing record.

‘But I’m persuaded to allow the appeal to this extent: while the five blows can be characterised as a deliberate and gratuitous attempt to cause harm to the dog, it was lesser harm, not greater harm.

‘There was no prolonged suffering.’

The judge ruled that 12 weeks imprisonment, rather than 18, should have been added consecutively to the five-week suspended sentence, reducing the total to 17 weeks rather than 23.

He said the ten-year ban on keeping animals would remain in force.