After several hours of deliberation a jury has found a housemate guilty of committing an act of bestiality on a cat named Dutch.
On Wednesday, August 19, ACT Supreme Court jurors found the accused man, who is in his late 20s and has not been named for legal reasons, guilty.
The trial began on Monday and the jury heard two days of evidence, they then returned the verdict for one count of bestiality on a male tabby cat.
It had been alleged that on February 14, 2025, the housemate and the cat's owner were watching football when they left the home to get food.
The two men ended up going to a nearby pub for a few hours until last drinks. While the cat owner was waiting for a Domino's pizza order, the housemate went home.
He is accused of committing the bestiality act, suffering scratches to his hands and arms, in the time it took for the owner to return.
On Wednesday, Chief Justice Lucy McCallum thanked jurors and said the "trial was short but it was intense".
She urged members of the jury to contact a counselling service provided by the court if needed.
Giving evidence on Monday, the cat's owner described arriving home on the night in question to see the other man at the kitchen sink, cleaning his hand which appeared to have been cut.
"That's when [my housemate] then told me that Dutch had attacked him," the owner said.
The owner told the court he walked into the living room to find blood on the ground and walls before locating Dutch in his bedroom "covered in blood and down, quivering".
"When I went to go near him he started hissing like crazy at me ... like I've never seen before," he said.
An emergency veterinarian who examined Dutch that night gave evidence that the cat had suffered injuries to the rectum which were not "natural".
The vet opined the animal had suffered "trauma of some sort" caused by "insertion of an object".
During closing submissions, defence barrister Edward Chen argued that "one good test is worth a thousand expert opinions".
He pointed to evidence that no human DNA had been found.
"This point in itself outweighs all the other evidence," he told the jury.
Crown prosecutor Sam McLaughlin had argued the "only reasonable thing that fits with all the evidence is that the accused did what was alleged".
The prosecutor said Dutch was an indoor-only cat, the front door was routinely closed and the only person home before the owner returned was the accused housemate.
"You might think those scratches are wholly consistent with a person holding a cat who is agitated and attempting to defend itself," Mr McLaughlin told the jury.
The guilty man, who is remanded in custody with bail denied, is set to face the start of sentencing proceedings in December.
