Los Angeles, California:
A Southern California man whose four pit bulls fatally mauled a woman near her home was sentenced on Friday to 15 years to life in prison for second-degree murder, a court clerk said.
Alex Donald Jackson, 31, received the sentence during a hearing at a court in Lancaster just north of Los Angeles, a few months after his conviction at a trial where jurors heard evidence of past attacks by the dogs that prosecutors say demonstrate Jackson knew they were a menace.
The case stemmed from the death last year of Pamela Devitt, 63, who was taking a morning stroll on the roadside in Littlerock, a sparsely populated high desert town, when a pack of Jackson's pit bulls began to claw at and bite her.
Devitt died in an ambulance of blood loss after suffering up to 200 puncture wounds.
Jackson was convicted in August of second-degree murder, cultivation of marijuana, possession of marijuana for sale and possession of the controlled substance psilocybin, a component of mushrooms used to get high, and he was found to have been armed with a shotgun.
He had faced a possible sentence of 24 years to life in prison on the charges.
Prosecutors had argued during the six-day trial that Jackson's dogs menaced or bit nine people over nine months, and that he knew the deadly risk they posed. On two occasions, witnesses testified that Jackson stood by idly while his dogs attacked passers-by.
About 30 people a year die in dog bite-related deaths in the United States, which is home to more than 70 million dogs, according to a spokeswoman from the National Canine Research Council.
© Thomson Reuters 2014