A judge found a Carroll farmer guilty Tuesday of animal mutilation and sellingtainted meat from a farm littered with livestock carcasses and a slaughterhouse caked with blood.
Carroll Circuit Judge Thomas Stansfield delivered his decision after the defendant, Carroll Schisler Jr., 34, entered an Alford plea, in which he did not admit guilt but acknowledged the state had enough evidence to convict him.
Schisler, who manages his father?s New Windsor farm, was found guilty of animal mutilation, adulteration of food, delivery of adulterated food, conspiracy to steal a motorcycle and witness intimidation.
As part of a plea agreement, he was ordered to serve five years in prison, with all but three suspended, for the witness intimidation charge. That time is to be served concurrently with Schisler?s current incarceration for driving under the influence of alcohol and driving with a suspended license.
Stansfield also ordered Schisler to serve a suspended jail sentence and five years of supervised probation for animal mutilation and theft.
Schisler?s lawyer, Daniel Green, admitted that his client had threatened Guy Gordon Marsh, a truck driver, for accusing Schisler of stealing a $20,000 motorcycle and a $2,000 cycle trailer from state Trooper Wesley Lutz. The judge ordered Schisler to pay $9,000 restitution to Lutz.
At the farm, police found bony pigs feeding on dead hogs and cows, and a bloody shed where customers killed goats, chickens and swine or had Schisler do it, prosecutor Melissa Hockensmith said.
“It was a butcher building overflowing with animals, with soiled knives and soiled surfaces, and it was open to the outside, and customers were allowed in,” she said.
A necropsy revealed that one pig was infected with trichinosis, a parasitic disease that can kill humans.
The farm has been under quarantine since April 2006.
Schisler?s father, Carroll Schisler Sr., is scheduled to go on trial later thismonth on animal cruelty charges.
The elder Schisler testified during a separate trial in May that he often buys sick animals at livestock auctions for low prices, then nurses them back to life and resells them for profit.
