A Concord woman convicted of neglecting three horses at a farm in Northfield remains free on bail pending her appeal to the state’s highest court.
The appeal to the state Supreme Court will be the second time Joanie Osgood, 59, has asked a higher court to review her case. Osgood was convicted in 2015 of three counts of animal cruelty and first appealed the misdemeanors to Merrimack County Superior Court, where she was granted a new trial. In May, a jury heard the case and found her guilty.
Osgood was back at the Concord courthouse Tuesday to be sentenced. The defense argued for no jail time, while the state recommended a sentence of 90 days in jail – 60 more days than a circuit court judge had initially imposed in 2015.
Ultimately, Judge Diane Nicolosi didn’t side with either party and upheld the circuit court sentence of 30 days to serve. The remaining 11 months of Osgood’s 12-month sentence are postponed for three years on conditions of good behavior. Osgood is also prohibited from owning or caring for horses during that three-year time frame.
Nicolosi ordered Osgood to pay a total of $34,126 in restitution to Live and Let Live Farm, an animal rescue facility in Chichester where the horses were taken in June 2014. The money is for the horses’ boarding and medical expenses between that summer and October 2015, although those costs to date total more than $70,000, according to Assistant Merrimack County Attorney Cristina Brooks.
Brooks visited the horses at the Chichester farm this past weekend with her family and took photos, which she shared with the court to document what she called remarkable improvements in the animals’ health. Osgood abandoned the horses in 2011, Brooks said, but the abuse dates back to 2003.
Police reported in 2014 that the horses were severely malnourished, dehydrated and experiencing muscle atrophy.
Osgood was one of two people arrested that year and accused of neglecting horses at the property of Bert Southwick, an elderly Northfield farmer. Southwick, who has since died, was a fixture in the community, having delivered eggs for more than seven decades on a horse-drawn buggy.
The other owner, Harold Kelley of Laconia, pleaded guilty last year to two misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty. As part of a deal reached with prosecutors, he agreed to pay $6,000 to Live and Let Live Farm.
The rescue’s founder and executive director, Teresa Paradis, said the horses lived in deplorable conditions for more than a decade before police intervened.
She told the court that she first visited the barn in Northfield in 2003, when a young woman asked her to take the two Morgan horses she’d been boarding there for more than a year.
That was the first time Paradis had encountered a horse named Blue who she said “tore up my heart” and left a “soul-wrenching” impression on her.
Paradis asked the judge to impose three consecutive sentences against Osgood, rather than concurrent ones, because each of the three horses deserve justice. She said she didn’t care if each of those sentences was one week or one year long.
Public defender Timothy Landry maintained at sentencing, as he had during the jury trial, that Osgood had transferred possession of the horses to Southwick to make up for unpaid boarding fees totaling about $17,000.
“There’s just no evidence in this case that Joanie actively participated in this cruelty,” Landry said.
Nicolosi disagreed, saying she didn’t buy Landry’s argument.
“I accept the jury verdict in this case. The defense you raised that these horses were abandoned to Bert Southwick for nonpayment . . . was something presented to the jury and rejected,” she said.
Nicolosi then turned her attention to Osgood: “I believe you knew exactly the condition of this farm. You knew the ability of these people to provide care to these horses. These horses were your responsibility.”
Landry spoke at the end of the hearing of his intent to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. He specifically cited Nicolosi’s denial of the defense’s motion to dismiss, and what he called a lack of sufficient evidence from the state to support the charges against Osgood.