MONROE — A man charged with cockfighting his chickens at his Clarno residence has signed a deferred prosecution agreement in the case and owes the county $11,000, while his co-defendant’s case remains ongoing.
Water Mihn Dang, 37, entered the three-year agreement in November on three misdemeanor counts of intentionally mistreating animals as a party to a crime.
In exchange, felony charges of instigating animal fights and seven counts of animal mistreatment causing death were dismissed.
The agreement stipulates that Dang pay the county $11,133.93 for the care of 40 live chickens seized by Green County deputies from his property. He is also ordered not to “own, possess or train any animal during the term of the agreement.”
If he complies, the charges will be fully dismissed in three years. Assistant District Attorney Laura Kohl notes in the agreement that it is intended to “assist in prevention of further future law violations” and does “not indicate that the Green County District Attorney’s Office believes the present charges to be unfounded.”
Both Dang and his co-defendant, Phuong “Lily” P. T. Nguyen, 40, have denied involvement in cockfighting.
Dang told the Monroe Times the flock of chickens he kept at their residence south of Monroe in the W6900 block of County B, Town of Clarno, was just his hobby. He said he decided to get back into raising and breeding the birds after growing up with chickens in Vietnam. His father was a doctor, he said, and people were so poor after the Vietnam War that they paid his father in chickens.
Both Dang and Nguyen were born in Vietnam but said they have lived in the U.S. about 20 years and in the Monroe area three years.
Nguyen faces similar charges to Dang. Court records for a Jan. 22 status hearing in her case indicate Nguyen “feels she is not guilty and does not understand the proceedings even with an interpreter by phone.”
A language barrier has been an ongoing problem in the cases. Both Green County deputies who investigated the case noted a language barrier when talking with Nguyen and Dang. Court records for Dang’s deferred prosecution hearing in November note he “is having difficulty understanding the legal meaning of some things.”
Both Dang and Nguyen have been provided with a court-appointed Vietnamese interpreter for their hearings.
Typically court-appointed interpreters sit next to defendants and quietly interpret in real time without disrupting or interrupting the proceedings.
But the interpreter at Dang’s and Nguyen’s hearings has worked remotely, from as far away as California, through a phone line broadcast into the courtroom speakers, requiring everyone in the courtroom to wait while everything spoken is interpreted sentence by sentence for the defendants. The phone connection isn’t always clear, either, meaning phrases must be repeated to be understood.
“The back and forth ... is very cumbersome,” Nguyen’s attorney, Philip Brehm, told the Times. Vietnamese interpreters certified to translate in a courtroom setting are scarce in Wisconsin and “there are costs associated with bringing in an interpreter” that would need to travel a long distance to Monroe.
In Nguyen’s case, “we’re dealing with, obviously, a language barrier,” Brehm said. Nguyen is due back in court Feb. 27 for a status conference, and Brehm said he hopes to resolve with her before then if she wants to pursue a plea agreement or take the case to trial.
“My hope and desire is to get access to an interpreter so the three of us can sit down in the same room,” he said.
The cases against Dang and Nguyen began with an Oct. 23, 2018 report of domestic abuse. Court records indicate Dang told police Nguyen, his girlfriend, started threatening him and their children and threw a frying pan in his direction after he made a disparaging comment about her mother during an argument.
While deputies were investigating that case, Nguyen allegedly brought a deputy’s attention to a cellphone video of two chickens fighting.
When the deputy, Adam J. Bass, asked her if the video was of cockfighting, she responded, “At my house.” Bass noted in his report it was clear to him the video had been filmed in her yard but that Nguyen told him she had not personally seen Dang fight the roosters or instigate them to fight.
Sixty-two chickens, about one-third roosters, were then seized from the property, and some were euthanized right away. Deputy Paul Weichbrod, a trained humane officer for the sheriff’s office for more than 15 years, submitted a report to the court that described the flock as plagued by disease, injuries and aggressive behavior.
“It did not appear that any of these animals were being kept for the legitimate livestock purpose of poultry,” Weichbrod wrote.