A municipal judge in a small Alabama city found two women guilty Tuesday on all charges in a case that started when they were caught feeding and trapping cats on public property near the courthouse.
Wetumpka Municipal Judge Jeff Courtney sentenced 61-year-old Mary Alston and 85-year-old Beverly Roberts to two years unsupervised probation and $50 fines plus court costs for each charge. He also added a suspended sentence of 10 days in jail for both women.
The unusual hearing lasted all day and featured testimony by three Wetumpka police officers, a county official, the director of a national organization dedicated to the care of feral cats, the mayor and others.
Alston and Roberts both faced charges of criminal trespassing. Roberts is also charged with disorderly conduct and Alston faced charges of interfering with government operations, all misdemeanors.
The arrests in the small city north of Montgomery attracted national attention from animal rights organizations. The hearing was held in the Wetumpka City Council chambers with special prosecutor Brad Ekdahl from Prattville in front of the municipal judge. Supporters of Roberts and Alston filled about two-thirds of the seats, which also included local and national reporters from CBS.
Wetumpka police officers arrested Alston and Roberts on the morning of June 25. A story about the arrests appeared first in the Montgomery Advertiser in October. Wetumpka Police Officer Brendan Foster said that when he arrived on the county-owned property near the courthouse between 8 and 9 a.m., he found Alston in possession of Fancy Feast.
The 61-year-old from Wetumpka told him she was trapping feral cats and Foster told her to stop, or she would be arrested for trespassing. Video from the officers’ cameras showed at least three patrol cars surrounding Alston’s vehicle, which was parked near a wooded area where she had placed her traps.
“Y’all have three cop cars because I’m feeding cats?” Alston asked in the video. “It’s unbelievable.”
Foster and other officers returned later that morning and saw Alston’s car still on the scene. Roberts, 85, had joined her and was sitting inside her car when the officers came back. A trespass order had already been issued against Roberts for feeding cats in the past, so officers arrested her.
Roberts became angry when Wetumpka Police Officer Jason Crumpton placed handcuffs on her wrists. She slapped her keys into Foster’s hands and called him a “son of a bitch.”
“You all are unbelievable,” Roberts said. “This is what you are wasting city gas on.”
Alston was arrested after she spoke up as Roberts was questioned.
Officer Foster said he repeatedly told Alston to leave. In the video he told her to “get in her car.” Foster grabbed Alston’s arm and pulled her out of her car and to her feet before handcuffing her.
“She was arrested because she was feeding cats,” defense attorney Terry Luck said. “Is that correct?”
“No, she was arrested for criminal trespassing,” Foster said.
Wetumpka Mayor Jerry Willis said he saw Alston’s parked car and called the assistant chief of police, who sent three patrol vehicles. He said he had some interactions with Roberts and Alston before the arrest and acknowledged that Roberts had challenged him in the past about animal control ordinances. He said he did not order police officials to arrest the women.
“They have a right to make those decisions,” Willis said. “I don’t make those decisions for them.”
A county official testified that feral cats had created problems since early 2021 in a parking lot for county vehicles. Richard Beyer, chief operations officer for Elmore County, said cat food and trash from a nearby establishment also attracted buzzards.
Beyer said the cats and buzzards caused thousands of dollars in damage to vehicles. He said that included one incident when cats allegedly burrowed through the firewall, a steel barrier between the engine and passenger cab, and into a truck. An expert on feral cats later testified that such behavior would be more common among rodents and that cats typically don’t chew through metal.
Attorneys for Roberts and Alston said the women were baiting and trapping the cats to have them fixed, which helped reduce the stray cat problem. But Beyer said the food was attracting more cats and wildlife to the area. Beyer said he offered to have county workers trap the cats and move them to her home, an offer she declined.
“We asked her on multiple occasions to stop feeding those cats,” Beyer said.
Steven Tears, director of the Montgomery Humane Society, was asked whether trap-neuter-return programs are a nuisance to the public.
“No, it’s to fix the nuisance of the feral cats,” Tears said.
Tears said programs to trap, neuter and return cats have proved successful in other areas of the country.
“The Humane Society has invested thousands in Montgomery County to fix the cat problem,” Tears said.
Alice Burton, director of programs for Alley Cat Allies, a feral cat advocacy group that supports programs to trap, neuter and return, spoke after the trial.
“Compassion is not a crime,”Burton said. “These are good Samaritans that should be applauded and not handcuffed.”
Defense attorneys argued the trespass order against Roberts only applied to the dumpster area near the courthouse. Officers arrested her and Alston at another location between 50 and 100 yards away, according to testimony. The attorneys also said the trespass order was too vague and never made in writing.
Fundamentally, Luck said a person cannot be trespassed from public property unless they are committing a crime. Feeding cats is not illegal, he said.
“You can’t prevent a citizen from being on public property doing something that the First Amendment allows them to do just because someone doesn’t like it,” Luck said.
The prosecutor said the city and county had good reason to prevent the women from feeding and trapping feral cats.
“The testimony here has been ample about the damage, the destruction, the monetary loss,” Ekdahl said. “There is absolutely a valid reason to ask these ladies not to do this.”
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