OKLAHOMA CITY — An eastern Oklahoma County couple are named in nearly five dozen felony counts charging them with maintaining a site where chickens were raised for fighting.
A law adopted 21 years ago led to the 59 criminal charges filed May 22 in Oklahoma County District Court against Ellie Pennit Grino, 50, and his wife, Jannine Crespo Yee, 45, of Newalla, for promoting fowl fights.
State Question 687, which Oklahoma voters approved in November 2002, provides that a violation of the cockfighting statutes is a felony that can be punished with a prison term of one to ten years and/or a fine of $2,000 to $25,000.
Yee is named in one count of keeping a place, equipment or facility used in permitting cockfighting.
Grino is named in 59 felony charges: one count of keeping a place, equipment or facility used in permitting cockfighting; 50 counts of possession of roosters with the intent to engage them in a cockfight; and eight counts of cruelty to animals, for not providing some of the birds with shelter.
When investigators executed a search warrant April 9 at the Grino/Yee residence, several roosters were staked outside at the rear of their property.
After their search, investigators from the Oklahoma City Police Department and the Oklahoma City Animal Welfare Division reported confiscating:
• 50 roosters and 41 hens plus 138 eggs, nine of which hatched at the animal shelter.
• Chicken feed, antibiotics and vitamins.
• Several syringes and needles.
• Several leg tethers.
• 181 magazines about cockfighting, dating from 1960 through 2014, and a book about the American Pit Bull Terrier.
• Six notebooks reportedly filled with handwritten records about breeding and fighting roosters, fight schedules, analyses of chicken fights, and papers explaining the proper way to attach metal spurs — gaffs — to the legs of fighting chickens prior to combat.
• A metal sign of two roosters fighting.
• And typewritten “talking points for OK Legislature” dated September 2008.
The latest activity in the case occurred June 6, 2023, when an order was issued to transfer pertinent documents to District Judge Susan Stallings.