Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, sought Tuesday to amend a bill on domestic violence to make animal torture and extreme animal cruelty a felony.
Animal cruelty is now a misdemeanor.
Senators later approved the underlying bill, which makes technical changes in Kansas' domestic violence law, on a 35-5 vote that sent it to the House. Haley, a former House member elected to the Senate last year, has unsuccessfully pushed the proposal since a 1997 case in Wyandotte County. In that case, four young Kansas City, Kan., men tortured and killed a 6-pound Yorkshire terrier named Scruffy. The dog was shot with a pellet rifle, placed in a plastic bag, doused with a flammable liquid, set afire while still alive and repeatedly beaten with a shovel. In the past, critics have noted that as a low-level felony, animal cruelty would result in a sentence of probation.