A Texas woman has pleaded guilty to having made various animal torture fetish videos. In the videos, she tortured, suffocated or hacked puppies, kittens, and chicks alive.
Ashley Nicole Richards, 24, pleaded guilty this week to creating and distributing animal torture fetish videos. These are known as “animal crush” videos, information provided to Breitbart Texas by the U.S. Attorney’s Office revealed.
Richards was originally arrested on state charges on August 15, 2012 and a federal grand jury handed down an indictment months later. Those charges were then dismissed after a federal court cited constitutionality issues.
Defense attorneys for Richards and Brent Justice, who is described in court records as an alleged co-conspirator in the case, claimed that the videos were protected under the First Amendment right to free speech.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision and Richards’s defense asked for the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, Breitbart Texas’ Lana Shadwick reported. After the declined to hear the case, the Texas woman found herself back in a Houston federal courtroom to face four counts of producing animal crush videos and one count of distributing the videos. Her sentencing is set for a later date this year.
Brent Justice remains in federal custody and has not been convicted on the state charges or the federal charges. His case remains pending.
The woman has already been convicted on state charges related to the case and is serving a 10-year prison sentence.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, in a thirteen minutes long video, a scantily clad Richards is seen taping shut the mouth of a pit-bull mix puppy before striking him with a meat cleaver. The woman then chops the one of the puppy’s paws off before hacking its head off and urinating in it.
In a separate video, Richards is seen stepping on a cat’s eye with the heel of her shoe.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas you can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
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