Jury convicts one, acquits another in Pensacola-based dog fighting operation

A federal jury has convicted one man and acquitted another in a dog fighting operation centered in Pensacola, while three others previously pleaded guilty. Shane Patrick Sprague, 35, was convicted of felony conspiracy to violate the dog fighting prohibitions of the federal Animal Welfare Act. Prosecutors said Sprague operated C Wood Kennels, a dog fighting operation that arranged fights and trafficked in fighting dogs. The jury acquitted co-defendant Derek Jedidiah Golson of Pensacola, drawing the kind of split verdict that federal animal fighting prosecutions rarely produce but that juries weighing evidence against multiple defendants sometimes do.

The case reached trial after three other defendants had already resolved their charges. James “Tommy” Peek and Haley Cook Murph, both of Milton, along with David Lee Moser of Waynesboro, Tennessee, had previously pleaded guilty to seven federal felonies tied to the operation. Each of the eight counts of conviction carries a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, meaning the sentencing exposure for the counts Sprague was convicted on is substantial even by federal standards.

How the Case Came Together

Prosecutors built the case around C Wood Kennels, describing an operation that both staged dog fights and bought and sold animals for that purpose. The federal interest in dog fighting rests on the Animal Welfare Act, which Congress amended to make sponsoring or exhibiting an animal in a fighting venture a felony and to criminalize the trade in fighting animals across state lines. Those provisions give federal prosecutors jurisdiction whenever the activity crosses state borders or involves interstate commerce, which is how a kennel operation based in the Pensacola area ended up in federal court rather than state court.

According to prosecutors, Murph traveled to Steele, Alabama, to buy a fighting dog and served as a makeshift veterinarian for C Wood Kennels despite having no veterinary license. She admitted to performing surgical procedures on dogs injured in fights and removing dogs’ ears for fighting purposes; two dogs in her care died from their injuries, prosecutors said. The detail about the trip to Steele, a small community in St. Clair County north of Birmingham, illustrates the interstate nature of the trafficking prosecutors described, with animals and participants moving among Florida, Alabama and Tennessee as part of a single operation.

Peek admitted selling dogs he believed would be used for dog fighting. His plea, like the others, captured the commercial side of the enterprise — the buying, selling and movement of animals that kept the fighting operation supplied. Federal prosecutors have increasingly focused on that trafficking network in animal fighting cases, treating the participants as parts of a wider underground market rather than as isolated offenders.

The Verdict and the Sentences Ahead

With Sprague’s conviction and Golson’s acquittal, the jury drew distinctions among the defendants that the trial evidence supported. Sentencing for the convicted defendants will follow the preparation of presentence investigations, and the guidelines will weigh the number of counts, the role each defendant played and the treatment of the animals involved. The statutory maximum of five years and a $250,000 fine per count gives the court broad discretion, and animal fighting convictions have drawn significant sentences in other federal districts where large operations were dismantled.

“These barbaric acts of animal cruelty have no place in a civilized society, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office will pursue and prosecute these criminals to the fullest extent of the law,” said U.S. Attorney Lawrence Keefe of the Northern District of Florida. His office spans the Panhandle from Pensacola eastward, and animal fighting prosecutions have been a recurring feature of its docket in recent years, often worked jointly with federal investigative partners.

Why Dog Fighting Is a Federal Crime

The Animal Welfare Act’s fighting provisions have been strengthened repeatedly by Congress, closing loopholes that once allowed the activity to continue in states with weak enforcement and making it a federal crime to attend, bring a child to, or profit from an animal fighting venture. The law treats dog fighting as organized criminal activity rather than a simple cruelty offense, reflecting the gambling, trafficking and violence that typically surround it. A felony conviction under the statute also carries consequences beyond prison time, including the forfeiture provisions that allow courts to seize animals and property used in the operation.

Enforcement of those provisions depends on cooperation among federal investigators, local sheriff’s offices and animal welfare organizations, which often shelter and evaluate the dogs seized in raids. Dogs recovered from fighting operations require extensive behavioral assessment before any placement decisions can be made, and the costs of that care are among the reasons prosecutors pursue forfeiture alongside criminal charges. Cases built on records of dog sales, travel and communications — the kind of evidence described in the C Wood Kennels prosecution — have become the model for dismantling fighting networks end to end.

A Regional Problem With Local Roots

The geography of the case traces the routes investigators say the dog fighting trade follows across the Gulf South. Pensacola and Milton sit a short distance apart in the far western Florida Panhandle, while Steele, Alabama, and Waynesboro, Tennessee, anchor the other ends of the travel prosecutors described. Rural kennel properties, the ease of moving animals by vehicle across state lines and the underground nature of the events themselves have long made the interstate trade difficult to detect without sustained investigation.

What the Convictions Signal

For law enforcement agencies across the region, the outcome demonstrates that the federal animal fighting statutes are being used aggressively against operations in the Gulf Coast states. The mixed result — a conviction on the conspiracy charge alongside an acquittal — also shows that prosecutors must still prove each defendant’s connection to the venture to a jury’s satisfaction, whatever the evidence against others in the same case. For the defendants who pleaded guilty before trial, the resolutions spared them that uncertainty and preserved their cooperation for the larger prosecution.

Animal welfare groups that track dog fighting prosecutions note that large multi-defendant cases like this one tend to begin with tips about kennel operations and sales, then grow through financial records, phone evidence and witnesses. The descriptions offered by prosecutors in this case — a kennel brand used for the operation, out-of-state purchases, unlicensed veterinary work and dogs bred and conditioned for fighting — match the pattern that federal agents have described in comparable cases across the Southeast. Southeastern states, where the activity was historically tolerated longer than elsewhere, remain a focal point of federal enforcement.

The Toll on the Animals

Behind the legal proceedings is the treatment of the dogs themselves, which prosecutors laid out in the record of admissions. Dogs injured in fights received surgery from an unlicensed caretaker rather than a veterinarian, ears were cropped to conform to fighting conventions, and two dogs died from injuries sustained in the operation’s care. Investigators and welfare organizations describe the dogs used in these ventures as victims of deliberate conditioning — animals chained, trained and fought on demand, with no recourse for the injuries that follow.

The federal statutes were written with that reality in mind. Congress raised the penalties for fighting offenses to felony level in stages, extended the ban to possession and trafficking of fighting animals, and made it a crime to attend a fight, recognizing that the audiences are what make the gambling and profits possible. Each conviction under those provisions, prosecutors argue, disrupts not just one kennel but the network of buyers, sellers and event organizers connected to it.

What Comes Next

The Northern District of Florida will now move toward sentencing for Sprague and the defendants who entered guilty pleas, with the court weighing their roles in the conspiracy and the government’s account of the harm involved. The acquittal of Golson closes the case for him unless prosecutors pursue other charges, which they have not indicated. Whatever the individual outcomes, the prosecution has already documented the inner workings of a Gulf Coast fighting operation in unusual detail — from the purchase of a fighting dog in Steele, Alabama, to the makeshift veterinary care that failed the dogs in Murph’s care — and that record, officials note, is often the most lasting product of a case like this one.

Residents who suspect dog fighting activity are typically encouraged to report it to local law enforcement or federal authorities rather than confront it directly, since the ventures are treated as organized criminal enterprises. For the agencies involved in the C Wood Kennels case, the message of the verdict is that the trafficking routes connecting Pensacola, Milton, Steele and points beyond remain within reach of federal prosecutors — and that the animals at the center of the trade now have a dedicated federal statute behind them.