by Derek Achong

A labour­er from Ma­yaro has been placed on a three year bond to keep the peace af­ter ad­mit­ting to com­mit­ting beas­t­ial­i­ty al­most 12 years ago.

Rod­ney Lawrence re­ceived the sen­tence from High Court Judge Kathy-Ann Wa­ter­man-Latchoo on Tues­day af­ter plead­ing guilty to the of­fence.

Lawrence was ac­cused of com­mit­ting the sex­u­al of­fence against a male dog on April 23, 2012.

Res­i­dents of his com­mu­ni­ty re­port­ed hear­ing strange nois­es com­ing from a bushy area and one went to in­ves­ti­gate.

The man claimed that he found Lawrence with the dog on a mat­tress un­der a man­go tree.

The mixed-breed dog, which was owned by a mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty and named "Whitey" based on the colour of his fur, was tied to the tree and was re­port­ed­ly gagged with Lawrence's vest.

Af­ter Lawrence al­leged­ly spot­ted the man he aban­doned the dog and jumped a fence of a near­by prop­er­ty.

He was ar­rest­ed by the po­lice near his home short­ly af­ter.

Lawrence ini­tial­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing as he claimed that he was at­tacked and beat­en by a man in the bushy area.

How­ev­er, he sub­se­quent­ly con­fessed while be­ing fur­ther in­ter­ro­gat­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers.

The dog was tak­en to a vet­eri­nar­i­an to be ex­am­ined and was sub­se­quent­ly eu­thanised due to the in­juries it sus­tained in the at­tack.

Be­fore Lawrence agreed to plead guilty to the of­fence, he re­quest­ed a max­i­mum sen­tence in­di­ca­tion (MSI) from Jus­tice Wa­ter­man-Latchoo on the pos­si­ble high­est sen­tence he would re­ceive if he plead­ed guilty.

While she in­di­cat­ed a three year prison term, Jus­tice Wa­ter­man-Latchoo con­sid­ered that af­ter be­ing charged he spent al­most two years on re­mand un­til he was able to ac­cess bail.

She al­so not­ed that he had a clean crim­i­nal record be­fore and af­ter the in­ci­dent as she placed him on the bond.

Jus­tice Wa­ter­man-Latchoo en­cour­aged Lawrence to avoid any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in the fu­ture as she not­ed that the of­fence was se­ri­ous though not preva­lent.

In the event that he com­mits an of­fence dur­ing the pe­ri­od, Lawrence will be brought back be­fore Jus­tice Wa­ter­man-Latchoo to be re-sen­tenced.

Lawrence was rep­re­sent­ed by Shaun Mor­ris, of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers' De­part­ment.