If being a lawyer required the person to demonstrate good moral character, there would be a lot less lawyers out there. These guys were just getting some job training by destroying a life.

They should both be convicted of felonies, if it was a human they beheaded they would both be charged with homicide. Before people start saying that animals are slaughtered for food in slaughterhouses and farms daily, I already know that, this was neither a slaughterhouse nor a farm. This was not a food animal nor was it theirs.

What a generation that's been spawned; such ill-will and mean-spirited natures with no empathy nor respect for anyone or anything. It's a sociopathic epidemic. Good breeding and installation of values begin at birth.

Worse, these degenerates will become parents someday and do an even far worse job than their parents did.

Anti, sad to say, but almost every study done to date has found a correlation between animal cruelty and how the person treats people. Almost every mass murderer, including shooters, have some kind of brush with the law due to animal cruelty, which shows they have a total lack of empathy with living beings. It doesn't matter if the animal in question was a "food" one or a pet (it can be argued that this one was, being part of the "staff" of the hotel/casino), so you are totally correct. Had cutting off the bird's head not satisfied them, how long before they abducted a child and did the same? We may never know the answer to that question, but I'd rather see them in jail before it can happen. I hope to the Divine that these two never become lawyers of any stripe, as their brand of insanity will infect everything they do. In a just world, not only will they get jail time, but mandatory psychiatric care. They obviously need it and ASAP!

CelticPagan

Sadly it is true, you are completely correct.

Good moral Character? Lawyers should go the same way as the bird. Off with their heads.

Teixeira's charges include felony killing and felony torturing of an animal

Already done, thank goodness. Now, though come convicting them. Juries tend to not come to the same conclusions we do, since these two will have lawyers who will argue that the video doesn't show it was them that did the actual killing or even the theft, just that the chased the bird into some trees and later emerged with a dead bird. Cue the, "We saw this bird outside its cage, tried to catch it, and as the video shows, it went into some trees, and it took a little while to find it, and when we did, it was dead, killed by person or persons, unknown." If just one person on the jury buys it, that is reasonable doubt and these two walk away scot free. Sick, but true, and has happened far too many times already. Jury pools are increasingly becoming filled with people too stupid to get out of jury duty, or so I have heard said, which means it is easier, in my mind, to seat a jury willing to believe most crap, regardless of the law. Maybe it is time we had professional jurors, akin to para-legals, who sit on juries, but with knowledge of the law, not an addiction to reality TV. Just an idea, and it would provide thousands of new jobs too. In any case, if these two are not convicted, will we next hear about them killing a child for the thrill? Gods, I hope not.

Where did you see a mug shot?

Mary, check Huffington Post

...most parents wish they could send their kids to berkeley.

Yeah, in Romney's world this would be dismissed as a mere "prank". The only reason he is not a convicted felon is that when he attacked a fellow "prep school student", forceably cut this student's hair and humiliated him, an act which probably resulted in that student's later suicide there was NO prosecution.

So now, we going to just making things up? "which probably resulted in that student's later suicide" Care to tell me where you found that information? Doesn't matter, if it makes a Republican look bad it doesn't need to be true. The sheep will believe it.

Not an idiot -- a sociopath.

Very true!

And you fail to see any difference whatsoever in those two situations? I have pet poultry I'm quite attached to, which are my PROPERTY, if nothing else. Birds on farms don't usually live for 14 years, by the way.

Obviously, one difference is that these guys beheaded the bird for the sheer pleasure of killing.

However, I disagree also with your basic premises, which are both logical fallacies: argumentum ad baculum or "might makes right" (we have the power to kill other animals so it's okay) and tu quoque or "you also," essentially "you do it too" (the killing of animals on farms for food and someone's participation in that, even tangentially, is irrelevant to the rightness or wrongness of this particular instance.

Or a woman chooses to scrape her uterus to knowingly terminate a developing human's life...

You just couldn't resist the impulse to inject your non sequitur, could you? GTFOH!

Funny that you think the killing of an exotic bird, someone else's property, and the execution of a food chicken, is the same thing. Do you think the murdering of your child, and the shooting of a soldier in a war is the same thing too? So if your mom gets killed by some maniac, is that a good defense for the criminal? Should he get away with it because somewhere in the world, shooting of humans is sanctioned by international military law? Context is everything. These too seemed to have killed the bird for the pleasure of it, and it wasn't even theirs to decide it's fate.

Selfish sociopaths have a justification for everything. I want, I want, I want. Just because you want it, does not justify the means of getting it or doing it.

Yes! Free animal abortions for everyone! Sometimes female animals make a mistake about who they sleep with.

You would think that law students would know about security video, but maybe they have developed their i-am-god-above-any-law complex a little early. The benefit of booze - lowering the inhibitions allows the true character to shine through.

So killing one bird is a felony, but killing millions every day for food is perfectly acceptable? Maybe this country should get its food choices in line with its ethics.

That's why we have hunting licenses.

Um it is. This exotic bird was not raised or killed for sustenance (the role of the lesser animals such as chickens or turkets).

However, the ethics that is pathetic in the West is allowing abortions, and brainwashing generations to think it is merely a (and only a) "woman's reproductive issue."

That's moral and ethic bull@!$%#.

What did I just tell you?

I can understand the jump from unlawfully killing birds not meant for food to killing birds raised specifically for feeding humans. I don't understand how you can make the jump from birds to abortion. Take your agenda somewhere else, please. If you don't want an abortion, don't have one. If you don't want others to have an abortion, make it easier for them not to. Aside from your rants on Newsvine, have you ever done anything to comfort an expecting woman contemplating an abortion? Help her with expenses, facilitate an adoption after the birth of the child, shelter her, and so on. If not you individually, maybe your church? Maybe you could try a few good works instead of your inflammatory comments.

I don't understand how its a felony either. Beheading is actually the preferred method of on farm harvest for chickens and its fairly humane provided the neck is broken first.

Prosecutors say Justin Teixeira, 24, and Eric Cuellar, 24, stole a 14-year-old helmeted guineafowl from a cage at the Flamingo resort and casino on Oct. 12.

You missed the part where it wasn't their bird to kill in the first place.

Besides, it's only worth killing a bird if you plan to eat it. Those millions of birds you speak of are for food, not entertainment.

I don't like the practice of factory farming, but let's not compare these situations are so much the same.

So nonetheless an admission of guilt - "manslaughter" in the least, but still revealing in their characters.

Sorry, but dickheads and c*nts in their 20s who f*ck up need ramifications...

You have an odd idea of "harmless" . . .if you think invading an animal's cage and 'grabbing it around his neck area' is harmless.

On the other hand, perhaps your were practicing facetiousism, as my friend calls it. Doesn't play well on the internet.

I know for a fact that the "beheading" wasn't intentional. They were a little buzzed, went into the cage to catch the bird and then release it within moments.

You know this for a fact? Are these friends of yours? So when someone who has too much to drink, gets in a car and kills someone it should be overlooked? It's all in fun, right?

If intent was everything, then the person who keeps a loaded weapon by their bed intending to keep the family safe will not be charged when that gun is used to kill an innocent person either by accident or during a crime. Intent is taken into account, and should be, but does not excuse the crime.

It's all about responsibility. I don't think these guys should be locked up for life like some seem to feel (that is the standard answer anytime someone does something stupid), but they have to pay the consequences of getting "a little buzzed", stealing someone else's property, and destroying that property. It is sad but irrelevent that it was a living being, according to the law. But they will, hopefully, pay a stiff price for their "harmless prank gone wrong".

Dave...are you usually so stupid?

Gee, I've heard that drunkenness is no excuse for bad behavior and that when drunk, you wouldn't do anything that you wouldn't do sober. That what the laws decides, isn't it. It's okay to get drunk and rip a birds head off? Because they didn't mean to do it, it was a harmless prank? I think it's negligent homicide.

Ewwwwww. Your stupid is showing!

Guess they only have to practice "good moral character" until they pass the bar. Then it's anything goes.