WEST PALM BEACH, Fla-- Animal cruelty or not? That is what a Palm Beach County jury is deciding.
A Loxahatchee slaughter house owner is on trial accused of killing animals in an inhumane way.
The 6 person jury has begun its deliberating. It is faced with answering this main question:
is Jorge Garcia guilty of slaughtering animals in a way that forced them to feel pain and suffering.
The prosecution's case relies largely on hidden camera video from an undercover investigation from last October.
That investigation was led by an organization called ARM, or the Animal Recovery Mission.
There were only two witnesses in the this entire trial. Both were state witnesses. One was a woman who went undercover for ARM with those hidden cameras. The other was a veterinarian trying to prove the animals suffered. The defense chose not to call anyone to the stand, including Garcia himself. Now his fate rests in the hands of a jury now in deliberations.
ARM’s investigation also accuses employees of this farm and two others of running an illegal horse meat operation. Garcia is not facing those charges, but another defendant from his farm is.
The jury was released at 6pm Tuesday night. It will start back up with deliberations at 9:00am Wednesday morning.
