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Animal abuse case results in guilty plea
MU student gets suspended sentence.

Zachary W. Famuliner, 20, pleaded guilty yesterday to animal abuse for stabbing an opossum multiple times during a fraternity prank last year in Columbia.
Associate Circuit Judge Larry Bryson suspended imposition of a sentence and placed Famuliner on two years of unsupervised probation. Bryson also fined him $500 for illegal possession of wildlife and dismissed a second count of animal abuse.

The judge ordered Famuliner to complete 50 hours of community service, undergo 20 hours of counseling and not consume alcohol during his term of probation. If he completes probation successfully, the court will seal its records of the case.

"Far be it for me to criticize Judge Bryson," Assistant Prosecutor Connie Sullivan later said of the suspended sentence, "but I think the conviction should have been on his record."

Sullivan had asked Bryson to impose a 90-day jail sentence on the University of Missouri-Columbia sophomore. She also asked the judge to bar him from hunting in the state.

Bryson told her he agreed that Famuliner should not be allowed to hunt but said state law already bars him from hunting because Famuliner has a prior conviction for deer poaching.

Famuliner and his parents declined comment after the sentencing.

Defense attorney Pat Eng said after the hearing that his client understands what he did was wrong but described the incident as a "stupid college prank."

"No one set out to abuse animals in this process," he said. "That is what we hoped to make clear to the judge."

Sullivan said she fears probation might not prevent future incidents like the one that took place Nov. 19.

Early that day, Columbia police responded to a disturbance call and found members of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity standing around a barrel full of about 40 opossums - half of them alive - outside the fraternity house at 602 S. College Ave.

Famuliner and fraternity brother Adam P. Thomas, 20, told police they’d collected the critters as part of a fraternity contest. Members drove around collecting opossums and returned them to the fraternity for points, getting one point for each dead animal and two points for each live one.

They told police they planned on releasing the animals into another fraternity’s yard.

The fraternity expelled Famuliner and Thomas after the incident, and MU placed the fraternity on probation through the fall 2006 semester.

Thomas paid a $500 fine in May for illegally possessing wildlife.

In an unrelated incident, Famuliner pleaded guilty in December to killing four deer out of season two months earlier in Boone County. He paid a $377 fine, according to court records.

During yesterday’s hearing, Kim Famuliner testified that her son grew up on the family farm near Carrollton and is an agricultural systems management major at MU.

When Sullivan asked her whether opossums are animals and whether they can feel pain, Eng objected, saying that he would stipulate that opossums are animals that can feel pain.

The exchange elicited chatter and soft laughter from some spectators in the courtroom.

Asked by Sullivan whether she knew about her son’s poaching, Famuliner said, "If you’re trying to say I don’t know my son, you’re wrong." Then the mother said she had not known about her son’s illegal deer hunting before he was caught.

"No, I don’t know what he does 24/7," she said.