A Salt Lake City judge has ruled that a horse trainer from Erda will stand trial this summer to face charges of cruelty to animals.
Shamus Haws, who has twice achieved recognition as Utah’s top horse trainer, was charged last July with 11 counts of alleged cruelty to animals, recklessly or with criminal negligence, a class C misdemeanor.
He pleaded not guilty to all 11 counts, and last February the defense filed a motion to dismiss the charges.
However, a Salt Lake City Justice Court judge denied that motion on Friday. Haws is now scheduled to appear at a final pre-trial conference on June 15 with the jury trial to begin on June 18.
According to documents from the Salt Lake County Justice Court, the charges are related to a single incident that occurred last summer in Magna.
A probable cause statement from the Salt Lake County District Attorney alleges that Haws left 11 horses in a Magna pasture where he had an agreement with a neighbor to pay the neighbor’s water bill if the neighbor would run his water overnight to fill a water trough on the pasture.
On July 18, two Salt Lake County police officers responded to a complaint and found 10 of 11 horses in the pasture had died, and that the water trough in the pasture was dry.
Further inspection found that metal wire used to support the hose had been pushed down on top of it, stopping the flow of water. The Utah Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory performed necropsies on three of the horses and confirmed that the horses had died of dehydration.
Haws declined to comment on the case pending the upcoming trial, but has said he feels the charges are based entirely on lies.
Additionally, his defense attorney requested at Friday’s hearing that the state prosecutor refrain from contacting media about the case, though the prosecutor asserted that no effort to reach out to the media has taken place. However, the court declined to issue a gag order.