A Hudson Valley woman, a former cop, was sentenced to two years in jail for starving nine horses to death.

On Thursday in Orange County Court, 52-year-old Jeanne Ryan, 52, of Goshen, was sentenced to multiple concurrent sentences of two years in the Orange County Jail in connection with the death of nine horses, and the mistreatment of a 10th horse.

On July 24, 2018, Ryan, a former New York City Police Officer who retired on a disability pension, was found guilty on ten felony counts of aggravated cruelty to animals. Ryan was also convicted of ten misdemeanor counts of overdriving, torturing and injuring animals, for underfeeding the same animals.

According to the Orange County District Attorney's Office, the maximum sentence for felony aggravated cruelty to animals is two years in jail. The maximum sentence for overdriving, torturing and injuring animals is one year in jail. Under New York State law a defendant can serve no more than two years in jail.

“In my opinion the current law does not provide for adequate punishment for instances of Aggravated Cruelty to Animals as were proven in this case,” Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler wrote in a press release. “The judge’s decision to sentence this defendant to the maximum sentences that the law allows was just and proper in light of this defendant’s conduct in systematically starving ten horses, nine of which died."

In July 2017, investigators from the Hudson Valley Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, with the help of police, executed a search warrant at the barn located at Ryan’s home in the Town of Goshen.

“Four of the barn's 18 stalls contained the decomposed bodies of horses who had presumably starved to death,” the Hudson Valley SPCA said in a press release. “In one, an eight-week old foal lay collapsed beside its mother in a nursing position. In another, an emaciated stallion, still very much alive, stood over the remains of his deceased friend. With no grain, hay or water on site, and without a way out of his locked stall, the stallion had been attempting to eat a wood window sill to survive. His hooves were overgrown, split and infected from exposure to the filthy floor. The remaining fourteen stalls were found to contain no animals but were filled with a foot or more of feces.”

The skeletons of six horses were found outside the barn, officials say.

The Orange County Animal Abuse Registry, which will prevent her from owning animals in Orange County, officials say.

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