Jones County voters are less than a week away from going to the polls and voicing their decision on county leaders. The political race in the county that is hottest on voter’s minds involves incumbent Sheriff Alex Hodge and fellow Republicans Macon Davis and Paul Sumrall. If Hodge defeats the two challengers on August 6, he will face Joe Berlin in November. Berlin qualified as an independent.
Perhaps the loudest topic of conversation related to the sheriff’s race over the past months has been Hodge’s department’s handling of five household dogs taken from the home of Lt. Colonel David and Mary Ellen Sennes on July 11, 2018. The five dogs, ranging in age from 12 to 20 years old, were all described in court documents as being either blind or deaf or both. Including the five dogs kept inside the house, the joint search and seizure engagement by the Sheriff’s Department and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) rescued a total of 55 dogs and 34 cats alive, while 17 animals were found already deceased on the Sennes property at 178 Lyon Ranch Road in Ellisville.
The search of the property and the subsequent seizure of the animals stemmed from a visit on May 18, 2018, by four volunteers from Southern Cross Animal Rescue. Those four volunteers later signed sworn statements saying that during their visit to the Sennes’ property that they observed an octagonal-shaped pavilion where dogs were kept and also a cinder cement blocked building with a sign (Kitty City) where cats were kept. The four SCAR volunteers said they saw “wire cages stacked upon one another with dogs in the cages without food or water with urine and feces on the blankets in the cages” and “wire cages stacked to the roof with cats in the cages and the strong smell of ammonia and no litter boxes with urine and feces-soaked blankets in the bottom of the cages.”
According to court documents, the four SCAR volunteers also took photographs of what “appeared to be wide-spread crimes involving cruelty to animals,” and SCAR later contacted the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), which in turn requested the Sheriff Office’s help with the investigation. Based on the information from the SCAR witnesses, the Sheriff’s Department acted, specifically Lt. David Ward, who was assigned the case.
“The animal seizure law (97-41-2) is one of a very few laws, in fact it’s the only one that comes to my mind as a matter of fact, that says that you can get a warrant for seizure based upon the testimony of another,” explained Lt. Ward in an interview last week. “It doesn’t say you have to have prior convictions, or that you have to have all this history with the person. There’s a specific reason why this law says this, because if someone knows an animal is in danger, I have to go off that testimony immediately. I cannot take months to build a case to get to that point like you do drugs. It clearly states that I can go off anyone’s sworn testimony to get a seizure, but I didn’t go off just one person; I went off four people.”
“With any case you have a complaint. You have a complainant come forward. They lodge a complaint, whatever it is. In this case it was animal cruelty. Complainants came forward, made a complaint of what was allegedly going on, and Lt. David Ward was assigned to the case, and Lt. David Ward then worked the case along with Southern Cross Animal Rescue,” added Sheriff Hodge. “That’s how any case starts: you get your facts and circumstances together and then you build a case; you then get affidavits signed; then if it’s gonna lead to a search you have to take the affidavits before a judge; you have to swear before a judge that these are the facts and circumstances we have; once the facts and circumstances are determined to be credible by the judge, the judge then issues a search warrant; then you go out and execute the search warrant."
“Now in this case it was actually even beyond that,” continued Hodge. “What we did was, again working with SCAR and the Humane Society of the United States, their legal team, along with our lawyers and judges, the whole nine yards, we reviewed everything as it was going through the process.”
A search and seizure warrant was signed by Jones County Chancery Court Judge Frank McKenzie on July 10, 2018, the day before officials arrived on the Sennes property.
“We didn’t just go down there and haphazardly start taking stuff,” said Sheriff Hodge. “We had to have a search warrant; we had to work within the scope of the search warrant, and if anything changes within the scope of that search warrant, you have to go back to the court.”
Hodge said officials handled the big group of animals separately from the five household pets.
“Once we realized that there were these five animals that they call theirs, we handled them in two different categories. We handled the big group in one category, and we handled the five in another category. We served them with a notice of seizure, meaning we’re about to seize these five dogs and here’s what you can do to appeal that seizure,” he noted. “So they were given a notice of seizure, and they had an opportunity to appeal that notice of seizure. That notice of seizure was not appealed during the appropriate amount of time. The courts then awarded the animals to the Humane Society of the United States.”
Hodge stated that the Sennes did not contest the forfeiture of the big group of animals.
“The five animals that they refer to in this civil case – all they are talking about is the five. They are not acknowledging the condition of the big group. The five, which were in bad shape, they are now saying we were wrong in taking their five pets. We were not wrong. In my opinion we went above and beyond to say ‘if you want these five, here’s what you do. It was explained to them; they understood the seizure process, the whole nine yards. So, the legality of all that is nothing to me. We followed the right procedures. Everything we did was signed off on by the courts. Lawyers looked at everything we did, the search warrant was executed, the seizure was well documented, books of it, the conditions of the animals, every bad place on them, every loss of hair on them, everything, whatever their issue was, every one of those animals was well documented.”
The sheriff also pointed out that without the help of the Humane Society of the United States, the rescue of the animals would have come at a very high cost to his department and the taxpayers of Jones County.
“If we had jumped off into that by ourselves, we would have been footing the bill for that, and so HSUS partnered with us and SCAR. They were involved, thankfully, so we were able to use the resources they had to come in and care for the animals. They housed them here locally for weeks, cared for them, nursed them back to health, did some adoptions and things of that nature on the big group, and then they moved the big group away from here. Again, having been awarded that by the courts.”
So what about the five house pets that seem to have disappeared after their seizure? According to court documents, the notice of seizure was signed by Lt. Ward and Mary Ellen Sennes, and according to an affidavit signed by deputy Clara McKinley, David Sennes also signed the notice. Ward agrees with the deputy, affirming that he witnessed both the Sennes signing the notice of seizure of the five pets. He also said that the five house pets were in bad condition, as bad as the big group of animals seized.
Court documents reveal that on July 19, 2018, eight days after the seizure, a motion for order of forfeiture and release of the seized animals was filed in Jones County Justice Court, apparently without any notice to the Sennes.
“We never gave them any paperwork (on the motion for forfeiture). I was advised I did not have to give them any paperwork. We gave them a notice of seizure that night after the search warrant that said ‘you have five days to contest this seizure in the court.’” Ward explained.
Hodge said his department followed legal guidelines by issuing a notice of seizure, getting signatures on it and explaining it to the Sennes. “They acknowledged it, and they didn’t do anything about it. The courts then forfeited the animals to us. We turned around and gave them to the HSUS, and we haven’t heard from them since.”
Circuit Court Judge Dal Williamson, who will preside over the civil litigation of the case, pointed out several items in his order filed on July 16 of this year that could prove to be of significance to the conclusion of the case.
The judge noted that Sean Murphy, a friend of the Sennes, was told by a person apparently speaking on behalf of HSUS that the household dogs did not have to be included in the voluntary surrender. The spokesperson later on, in a video, conveyed to Murphy that “we have also assured her that we will not touch the four that she has talked about which I just named to you. She does not have to relinquish those animals if they should so choose.”
According to Judge Williamson’s notes in the order, the spokesperson kept referring to four, instead of five, household dogs.
The judge also noted that on the Animal Surrender Form of the Humane Society that the following words are hand-written: “All animals removed from the above listed property with the exception of 1) Miss Poo 2) Loco 3) Sister Angel 4) Precious 5) Abby.”
The Animal Surrender Form was signed by Mary Ellen Sennes and the representative of the Humane Society. However, the five dogs were removed and handed over to the Sheriff’s Department following a forfeiture order from Jones County Justice Court. The Sheriff’s Department then surrendered the five animals to HSUS.
HSUS, in a motion for summary judgment, used the affidavit of Sara Varsa, who was reportedly the vice president of the HSUS Animal Rescue Team, to show that they no longer had possession of the animals. According to Varsa’s understanding, the five animals were transferred to the Washington, D.C., area “on or about July 21, 2018.” The animals were then supposedly transferred “to another animal rescue organization to provide veterinary care and to find the animals permanent homes.”
Judge Williamson seems to question at some level Varsa’s declarations in his order, writing that her affidavit is “devoid of specific detail” and “lacks necessary facts.”
The Sennes were arrested for aggravated animal cruelty back in July 2018 and were booked in the jail. At their booking, they were treated just like anyone else, according to Hodge.
Ward explained what happens to every person who is booked in the Jones County Adult Detention Center.
“They are booked in, and then they have to remove all their clothing and get in a jumpsuit; that’s for their safety – no shoe strings, no belts. One thing you have to do at a jail is make sure there is no contraband being introduced into the jail, which is drugs, alcohol, nicotine, pills, anything; so every subject that comes into the jail is strip searched,” he said.
Hodge was asked if his department conducted itself within legal guidelines from start to finish in the case involving the Sennes, including the search of their persons the day they were taken to the adult detention center.
“Absolutely, unequivocally, yes. Every person that goes into that jail, if they are booked into that jail, are treated the same. I don’t care who you are, including our working inmates who come in and out of that door every day,” he said with conviction. The sheriff also mentioned that contraband has been found on multiple occasions as inmates are booked into the jail.
“Every person who comes through that jail, if they come through the doors of that jail, they are going to be booked in, fingerprinted, photographed, and they are going on the website,” continued Hodge. “Everyone is searched for facility and officer safety. No apologies there, and it is constitutional. We have no motivation for not handling it properly. We treat everybody equally, we treat everybody fair, and those folks were treated exactly like anybody else. I’m not going to give anybody special treatment. I’m thankful as a veteran for anybody’s service, but you’re not going to get special treatment. My deputy sheriffs better not call me and ask me for permission to do their job; they better do their job. That’s what we do, straight across the board, and that’s what happened in that case. Now, the same people who are criticizing me for how they were treated would have criticized me for not treating them the same way that everybody else got treated that went through there, if the shoe was on the other foot.”
Although TV cameras captured some of the action at the Sennes property that day, Sheriff Hodge said no one from his office alerted the media.
“All of this was kept confidential, no media was told. We didn’t want it to be a circus on the front end. Once we executed everything, we followed the courts – paperwork, procedures. Everything we did was followed within the law to the best of our ability.”
Lt. Ward confirmed the sheriff’s account that no media was told of the mission prior to the execution of the search warrant.
“I stand solid on this one, as solid as I have on any other case I’ve had in nineteen years,” ended Ward.
Judge Williamson, in his 28-page order filed on July 16 that addressed a litany of issues involved with the case, denied motions for reconsideration of summary judgment by both Sheriff Hodge and HSUS, and the judge denied motions by the Sennes for a summary judgment related to some actual and punitive damages. The judge instructed both parties to get with the court administrator and set a trial date.