Two men convicted over the brutal death of a pigeon, described by a magistrate as ‘disgusting’, ‘disgraceful’, ‘vile’, ‘abhorrent’, ‘incomprehensible’ and a ‘betrayal of humanity’ have had their sentences slashed in half by the Court of Appeal.
Luke Summers and Michael John Roccisano were working at Norseman Gold Project Mine Site in June 2023 when they filmed themselves beating a pigeon to death with a golf club.
In court documents released this week, gruesome details of the crime were outlined, including that Roccisano, 30, was holding the pigeon in one hand and his mobile phone in the other, recording the animal, when he crouched down and said, “be careful, all right, because there are some bad c***s around here”.
Roccisano then dropped the pigeon to the ground before Summers “swung the golf club up in the air and forcefully hit the pigeon from the side as though Mr Summers was hitting a golf ball”.
The animal can be seen in a video uploaded to SnapChat called ‘may his soul rest in peace’ flying a metre in the air before it loudly hits the ground.
Summers, 25, can be seen hitting the animal a further four times while Roccisano laughs in the background.
Roccisano then held the animal upside down by its leg and then threw it half alive and moving into a skip bin.
When RSPCA inspectors caught up with Summers a year later, he told them the animal was injured and they thought it was “the best idea at the time” to kill it. He later lost his job over the incident.
In June last year, both men pleaded guilty to one count of animal cruelty and were fined by Kalgoorlie magistrate WIlliam Yoo. Summers was slapped with a $48,000 fine and Roccisano with $39,000 after Yoo voiced his disgust at the men.
A third man, Kudzai Chisweto, was also fined $39,000 over the incident.
At the time, the RSPCA said it was one of the biggest fines ever handed down for animal cruelty in WA.
“[It was a] disgusting and despicable thing to do,” Yoo said when he sentenced the men. “[The act] was absolutely disgusting, vile and reprehensible. [The pigeon’s] distress was evident [and the pigeon was an] innocent and vulnerable animal.”
After their sentencing, RSPCA WA Inspector Manager Kylie Green praised the large fines, saying she hoped the message “is loud and clear to those who think that cruelty towards animals is okay.”
But this week Supreme Court Justice Marcus Solomon SC overturned the sentences for both Summers and Roccisano who appealed claiming the fines were “manifestly excessive”.
Solomon agreed and re-sentenced the men.
“It is perhaps a sad reality that the behaviour is some considerable distance from the worst type of conduct to constitute such an offence,” he said.
“This was a one-off and imbecilic act of toxic and performative bravado on a single animal. It was somewhat sustained in its execution, but relatively brief overall. It was not repeated. It appears to have been fairly impulsive, inspired by the opportunity to impress those with a shared propensity for juvenile idiocy.”
He added that the men were “decent, responsible and gainfully employed young men of good character, with no relevant prior criminal convictions or history of unlawful conduct”.
He fined Summers $18,000 and $14,000, slashing their previous sentences to less than half.
