A Carroll County man failed in his appeal of his conviction for selling tainted meat from a blood-soaked New Windsor farm littered with livestock carcasses.
The Court of Special Appeals, the state?s second-highest court, affirmed the Carroll County Circuit Court conviction of Carroll Schisler Sr.
In his appeal, Schisler?s attorney, Roland Walker, argued that police searched the farm without probable cause because they obtained a warrant eight months after witnesses said they saw a stolen motorcycle on his property.
When police searched for the motorcycle in March 2006, they found 20 decomposing pigs and cows, dying animals with no food or water, and a blood-caked butcher shop, Carroll prosecutors said.
Police then got a second search warrant to investigate possible animal cruelty.
Walker said the second warrant was illegal because it resulted from the first, which was given based on eight-month-old evidence.
The court disagreed.
“As described by sources in the affidavit, the defendant secreted the motorcycle in the upper portion of the barn under a tarp, and hay bales were stacked around it,” Judge C. J. Krauser said in the 18-page opinion.
“It is probable that that method employed by the defendant to secret the motorcycle?s location implied that he intended to keep it.”
Krauser also wrote that the state trooperswho conducted the searches were acting in “good faith” and believed they were legally going to find the evidence they were looking for on the Schisler farm.
But Walker said he planned to appeal the case to the state?s highest court, the Court of Appeals.
“The search-and-seizure warrant contained stale, old and inaccurate information,” Walker said. “The judge shouldn?t have granted the warrant in the first place.
“I feel we have a very meritorious case. I?m very disappointed the Court of Special Appeals ruled against us.”
