Judge Deirdre Logan ordered Austin, 29, to serve 43 days beyond the 57 he has been incarcerated. Austin was convicted in February of the first-degree misdemeanor charge after a jury trial.
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Logan fined Austin $500 and ordered him to pay $940 in court costs, be on five years’ supervision and not have any dogs in his residence. The judge held 80 days back in case Austin violates his “no breaks” probation.
Prosecutors had lobbied for the maximum 180-day sentence, while defense attorney Carl Goraleski advocated for probation and said his client was taking responsibility for a dog owned by another family member.
“I don’t want you to have a dog, the responsibility for a dog or any animal again,” Logan said.
Logan said if she sentenced Austin to the maximum, it would have taken away the probation option.
“And I want keep control over you for the next five years,” she said.
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Brown, 60, died of blood loss from numerous dog bites on April 25, 2017, after being attacked by a dog in an alley behind a house at 345 Middle St.
Dayton police cruiser footage played during the trial showed neither Daniel Hartings or Scott Pendley checked on Brown’s bleeding body for about nine minutes.
Biehl said Thursday it took Hartings about three minutes to locate an exact address before he called for a medic, which Biehl said was done out of order.
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Biehl said he contacted Brown’s elderly mother in North Carolina by telephone on Thursday after Austin was sentenced.
“On behalf of the Dayton Police Dept., I extend our sincere condolences to the family and friends of Maurice Brown for the personal loss of their loved one resulting from this incident,” Biehl said, adding that his department’s actions “were not aligned with the mission, the core values or the training of the Dayton Police Dept.”
Dayton police Lt. Kimberly Hill, who used to oversee the department’s Professional Standards Bureau, was disciplined for not completing paperwork that could have led to serious sanctions for Hartings and Pendley. Hartings shot and killed the dog 55 minutes after arriving at the scene.
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Biehl said Pendley’s retirement — three weeks after the incident — meant he couldn’t be interviewed for an administrative investigation. Biehl said Hartings was issued a training memorandum — the most serious discipline available because Hill didn’t get paperwork done in time as mandated by union contracts.
On Thursday, police also released cruiser cam footage and internal affairs report involving Hartings and Pendley. The city had refused to provide those records after repeated requests by the Dayton Daily News.
“The response on this video is not the norm of the Dayton Police Dept. responding to critical incidents,” Biehl said. “We are here to protect and effectively serve our community and the visitors of our city. That is the unwavering commitment of our organization and my expectation as police chief.”
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Dayton assistant prosecutor Matt Kortjohn said Brown’s mother wrote a letter to the judge.
“You have shown zero remorse about owning these dogs and have suffered zero consequence,” Kortjohn said, quoting Brown’s mother referencing Austin, “while (my) son is gone.”
Austin said the situation was tragic and that if he could do anything differently, he would.
“I would like to apologize to the family for incident that took forth on that day,” he said, “and I want to let them know that I am very remorseful. This has shaken me up. This has caused a huge stress on my life. … I’m sorry.”
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Logan said tragedy could have been avoided with just a little bit more care about how the dogs lived.
“The situation that the dogs were in on that day is something more than lapse in judgment on the owner’s part,” the judge said. “It seems to me that there was a pattern of not taking care of those dogs. And in my opinion, I think that you were training those dogs to be vicious.”
Goraleski said he thought the judge could have used the case as an opportunity to educate the Dayton community about dog ownership, especially pit bulls.
“(Austin) wasn’t there,” Goraleski said, adding he disagreed with Logan. “He didn’t order the dog to do this. It wasn’t his dog.”
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