November 24, 1960
Court Rules: Lion Is a Wild Animal
A young Brooklyn longshoreman fought a spirited but losing battle in a Brooklyn courtroom yesterday for the right to keep a pet lion at his home.
After the drawn-out, somewhat tongue-in-cheek proceedings at Flatbush Magistrate’s Court, Magistrate Matthew P. Fagan resolved the issue with a concise decision: “I take judicial notice that the lion is a wild animal. I find the defendant guilty.”
The sentence was a $25 fine or ten days in jail. Anthony Ortolano, twenty-six, of 581 Carroll St., Brooklyn, the defendant, asked for ten days in which to raise the $25 and the magistrate granted the request, noting that Mr. Ortolano’s care of the lion had been exemplary.
The specific charge was Section 197 of the city’s Penal Law which makes harboring a wild animal capable of inflicting bodily harm a misdemeanor.
Mr. Ortolano’s troubles with the law began Friday night when Patrolman Thomas Higgins and another officer stopped a car at Union St. and Seventh Ave. to check on the automobile registration. In the car were Mr. Ortolano, three other men and Cleo, a four-month-old male lion, three and a half feet tall and weighing 125 pounds. Mr. Ortolano has since corrected the name to Leo in light of the discovery made over the weekend.
Leo and Mr. Ortolano were hustled off to the Bergan St. police station, where they cooled their heels while a summons was issued. Leo was taken to the Brooklyn shelter of the American Society For the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
The trial began yesterday with Mr. Ortolano’s attorney, William Kunstler of Manhattan, asking the judge if the lion could be brought in the courtroom as evidence that he was friendly and tame.
“Oh hell no,” said Magistrate Fagan. “All these people in here would start running. And I wouldn’t blame them.” About 150 persons were in the room.
Then he turned to some officers and asked if they had the
ir guns ready. “Don’t bring him in under any circumstances,” said the judge, “I will conduct this case outside.”
The judge, attorneys, witnesses, defendant and newsmen repaired to an alley outside the court where Leo had been brought in an ASPCA panel truck. The flap was let down to expose the lion, which was beating his head against the wire netting.
The judge opened court in the alley and read the complaint. Mr. Ortolano allowed Leo to lick his fingers through the cage. Then a noisy group of students from nearby Erasmus Hall High School joined the spectators and Magistrate Fagan decided to take the trial back inside. “I’ll take judicial note that I’ve seen the lion,” he said.
The testimony of witnesses followed.
Patrolman Higgins told of the Friday night arrest. He said that Ortolano had told the police that he had bought the lion two weeks ago for $350 from an animal dealer.
Mr. Ortolano said he had a leash on the lion at the time of the arrest and that the windows of the car were up. He said he had a steel cage for Leo in the backyard at his home.
To prove that the animal was tame, said Mr. Kunstler, he would call as witnesses two animal experts.
The first was Mrs. Helen Martini, of 1026 Old Kingsbridge Road, the Bronx, who said she had been an animal trainer for twenty years. Leo was not ferocious, but “very nervous,” she said. But when she was cross-examined by Irving Singer, Assistant District Attorney, she conceded that the animal belonged in a zoo.
Next came Bob Dietc, a zoo-keeper at Fairlawn, N.J., who said that he had trained Leo himself and that he was safe. “He’s only a baby, you could put him in your vest pocket,” he said.
Asked if it wasn’t true that the animal was unpredictable, Mr. Dietc said, “It’s my opinion that all animals are unpredictable, from chickens to birds.”
After the holidays the ASPCA will turn Leo over to Mr. Dietc who will keep him until he can sell him for Mr. Ortolano. Mr. Ortolano, who has been paying $3.15 a day for horsemeat for Leo, is busy getting together $25.
An article by Charles Portis in The New York Tribune. Portis worked for the Tribune for four years in the 1960s before turning to a career as a novelist. The story above is collected in a miscellany of his non-novels, Escape Velocity.
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