## Facts

- Waters, a member of a private club in El Paso County, Colorado, participated in shooting live doves released from traps for sport and amusement.
- The club owned and confined approximately forty live doves specifically to use as shooting targets.
- Waters shot at the doves as they were released; some were killed outright, some were wounded and then captured and immediately killed by others, and some escaped with unknown injury.
- The parties stipulated that any wounding was not done to inflict pain or to torture; it resulted from lack of skill, and Waters’s purpose was to kill the birds outright.
- Doves killed outright or after wounding were later eaten by Waters and others.
- The case proceeded as a test case on an agreed statement of facts; Waters was convicted and fined in justice court and again in county court (bench trial), then sought review by writ of error.

## Issues

1. Whether shooting and wounding live doves released from traps for sport and amusement constitutes “needlessly” killing or otherwise prohibited cruelty to an “animal” under Colorado’s anti-cruelty statute.
2. Whether the statute requires proof of an intent to inflict pain or torture, or instead turns on whether the conduct causes unnecessary or unjustifiable pain or suffering.
3. Whether the legislature may, consistent with private ownership of animals, criminalize conduct causing unnecessary or unjustifiable animal suffering when done for sport or amusement.

## Decision

- The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and fine.
- The court held that trap-shooting live doves for sport or to improve marksmanship is within the statute’s prohibition, even without a specific intent to inflict pain or torture.
- The court treated doves as covered “animals” and concluded the activity amounted to at least “needless” killing under the statute.

## Legal Principles

- When a cruelty statute defines “animal” broadly (including every living dumb creature), birds such as doves fall within its protection.
- Under a statutory definition of cruelty that includes acts causing “unnecessary or unjustifiable pain or suffering,” the prosecution need not prove a purpose to torture; it is enough that the act causes such pain or suffering without sufficient justification.
- Killing or wounding animals for mere sport or amusement may constitute “needless” killing and statutory cruelty, even if the animals are privately owned and later used as food.
- The state may regulate treatment of privately owned animals through the police power; ownership does not include a right to impose unnecessary suffering for amusement.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Waters’s conviction, ruling that releasing live doves from traps to be shot for amusement is a needless and unjustified killing within Colorado’s anti-cruelty statute, and that liability does not depend on proof of an intent to cause pain.


Waters v. People, 23 Colo. 33, 46 P. 112 (Colo. 1896)