he wrist-slap sentences given two men who killed and horribly mutil- ated two horsed in Kane County reflect two disturbing facts about a particular attitude toward cruelty to animals in Utah.      First, the prosecuting and de- fense attorneys who crafted the plea agreement that resulted in no jail time for the criminals clearly were more concerned about the financial loss to the horses’ owners than about the wanton cruelty of the crime and what it might signify.      Second, the Utah Legislature, bucking the national trend, con- sistently declines to make tortur- ing animals a felony. Even the worst cases of animal cruelty re- main class A misdemeanors, which can bring jail time, but are frequently bargained down.      The details fo the case are as sickening as they are alarming.      According to authorities, the two men entered a private ranch last summer and repeatedly shot a mare and a stallion. After the stallion went down, 23-year-old Gavin Demont Ewell of Toquer- ville and Hurricane resident Jer- emy Douglas Katzenbach, 21, cut off the animal’s ears, shot it in the legs through its hooves, jammed a stick in into its rectum and clubbed it with a rock wrapped in a T-shirt. They wrote vulgarities on the dead horse’s hide.      Police reports indicate the acts were not random vandalism, but calculated acts of vengeance against the animals’ owners.

Even so, the two perpetrators were allowed to plead guilty to felony criminal mischief and to class A misdemeanor animal cru- elty in exchange for 36 months of probation, written apologies, $200 in court fines and $27,500 in resti- tution for the 4-year-old stallion.      The original third-degree felony charge carried a possible penalty of up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine; the maximum penalty for the misdemeanor is a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.      Kane County Attorney Eric Lind defends the recommenda- tion of no time behind bars, contending that it is more important that Ewell and Katzenbach get busy paying restitution for their crimes than that they spend even a day in jail.      We disagree. The monetary value of the horses isn’t the only issue, nor should it be the over- riding one. It is true that under the law, animals are the property of humans, but cruelty toward a living creature is far different from vandalizing a barn or wrecking a car, especially in light of studies and law-enforcement statistics showing that torturing animals often is a precursor to violence against humans.      In 43 other states, animal cruelty is a felony. The Utah Humane Society is sponsoring an initiative on the 2004 ballot that would make the crime a felony in Utah. Given some legislators’ refusal to acknowledge the seriousness of this crime, a ballot initiative is called for. One way or the other, it is time to toughen the law.