Cape Girardeau man pleads guilty to dogfighting charges

BLOOMFIELD, Mo. - One of the men accused in an October 2007 dogfighting case, Jessie D. Short, has pleaded guilty in a courtroom in Cape Girardeau County.

Short, 32, of Cape Girardeau, pleaded guilty to one of the five counts of the Class D felony of dogfighting.

Short was given a suspended imposition of sentence and ordered to complete 18 months of unsupervised probation. His probation has as a special condition that he not engage in dogfighting of any kind.

The Oct. 21 raid north of Dudley in which Short was arrested was a cooperative effort of the Stoddard County Sheriff's Department, the SEMO Drug Task Force, the Missouri State Highway Patrol and the Missouri Humane Society.

Investigators recovered a large amount of evidence consistent with dogfighting including weights, treadmills, a bloody mat covering the floor of what was believed to be the ring where dogs fought and breaker bars commonly used to pry one dog's jaws from another.

Also arrested in the raid were 29-year-old Jamie Sifford of Dudley and 28-year-old Curtis Pickering of South Fulton, Tenn.

Sifford pleaded guilty in July to a probation violation for a six-year sentence and three years on the related dogfighting charges.

Sifford originally faced 18 charges of the Class D felony of dogfighting, three counts of the Class C felony of possession of a controlled substance and one Class A misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia.

Pickering faced three charges of the Class D felony of dogfighting but was found not guilty in a jury trial in Kennett, Mo.

Pertinent addresses:

Bloomfield, Mo.

Dudley, Mo.

Jackson, Mo.

Cape Girardeau, Mo.