Daniel Brighton: Animal cruelty charges related to dog's death to be heard in court again

The case against a petting zoo owner who was convicted of brutally killing a dog, sentenced to 26 months jail and then cleared of animal cruelty offences in the Supreme Court, is not over yet.

Daniel Brighton.

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A petting zoo owner who was convicted, then cleared, of animal cruelty offences despite violently bludgeoning a dog to death after it attacked his camel named Alice has had his case revert back to the Local Court.

RSPCA NSW successfully lodged an appeal in the Criminal Court of Appeal following a Supreme Court decision which cleared Get Wild Experiences owner Daniel Brighton of animal cruelty, via a legal technicality.

The successful appeal has pushed the matter back to Campbelltown Local Court once again, with a new hearing date set for December 15.

Brighton once lodged plans to build an exotic zoo.

Brighton, who once aspired to build an exotic zoo near Campbelltown, was sentenced to prison in June 2019 following a hearing at Campbelltown Local Court.

Magistrate Shane McAnulty found in the early hours of January 14, 2016, Brighton discovered two dogs attacking Alice the camel. In the Supreme Court, Mr Brighton accepted these findings.

When the mobile pet zoo operator saw the dogs attacking Alice, he used a pole to fend the dogs away, capturing one of them and tying it to a tree.

Twenty minutes later, he stabbed the dog with a pitchfork at least six times before leaving it lodged inside the animal’s body as he drove to a nearby vet to get medication for Alice.

Alice the Camel.

When he returned to discover the dog was still alive, he hung the animal from a tree and used a mallet to repeatedly smash the dog’s head up to eight times, ultimately killing the animal.

The 26-month jail sentence and conviction was dismissed by Justice Stephen Rothman who found the dog was a ‘pest animal’.

Justice Rothman ruled the magistrate made a mistake by not classifying the dog, which had trespassed on Mr Brighton’s property and injured his camel, as a ‘pest’.

Due to this classification, Mr Brighton was not criminally responsible for his actions and his two animal cruelty convictions were quashed.