GOSHEN – The attorney for Jeanne Ryan, the Goshen woman convicted of animal cruelty in the deaths of nine horses and the starvation of a 10th, filed a motion in State Supreme Court seeking to have her conviction vacated and have her released from the Orange County Jail pending determination of the motion.
Ryan was convicted last week in a bench trial before County Court Judge Robert Freehill. Attorney Michael Sussman, representing Ryan, said he learned that Freehill’s wife, Marlene, is president of the City of Middletown Humane Society.
“No juror with such connections would ever have been seated to hear a case of this sort,” Sussman wrote in his appeal. “Here, the court did not disclose this obvious familial conflict at the outset of his honor’s assignment to the matter nor when defendant chose a judge trial, an obvious course in a case which elicited some strong public remonstrations against her.”
The district attorney’s office said following her conviction, that it would seek the maximum two-year sentence in the county jail as allowed by law.
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