New Hampshire v. Tufano
Annotate this CaseDefendant David Tufano was convicted by jury for misdemeanor cruelty to animals. In 2019, Richard Roberge was working in his yard at his home in Somersworth. He heard a low, loud moaning noise coming from the defendant’s home across the street and went over to investigate. He saw the defendant with a hose in his hand spraying water into a plastic container. Inside the container was a “Havahart Trap” with a cat in it. He told the defendant to take the trap out of the bucket and open the trap, which the defendant did. The cat then ran off. Roberge did not immediately report the incident to police, but did so later, after other neighbors told him he should. Specifically, after his neighbor Sharon Barry told him about a prior incident in which defendant had placed a trap on his property, Roberge decided to contact the police. At trial, defendant objected to the trial court’s admission of any of Barry’s statements made about his cat trapping. Defendant also filed a motion in limine to allow him to impeach Barry with a prior conviction. The New Hampshire Supreme Court determined the trial court’s denial of defendant’s motion was an abuse of discretion. “While it was undisputed that the defendant sprayed the trapped cat inside a container, we cannot say that those facts alone ‘clearly constitute mistreatment of the cat that grossly deviates from what a reasonable person would do in the same situation.’” Because the erroneously-admitted evidence of prior cat trapping could have influenced the jury to view the defendant as a person who was “hostile toward cats” and likely to abuse or mistreat one, it could have led the jury to credit Roberge’s testimony over the defendant’s and to convict him of the charged offense. Judgment was reversed and the matter remanded for further proceedings.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.