A Newalla man who was charged three years ago with nearly 60 cockfighting-related felony counts after authorities seized nearly 100 game-type birds from his Oklahoma County property entered an Alford plea today on a sole count of possessing birds with the intent to engage in cockfighting.
For essentially pleading guilty while maintaining a claim of innocence, Ellie Pennit Grino received a three-year deferred sentence and was ordered to pay about $360 in court fees and fines. He faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison if he had pleaded guilty or had been found guilty by a jury at trial.
Grino, 53, had resisted settling the case since September 2024, after prosecutors dropped 56 of the charges filed against him and a judge had dismissed two of the three remaining charges during a preliminary hearing. Grino maintained it was his constitutional right to raise the birds, and attorney Billy Coyle used that argument in his motion to dismiss the case during a hearing Friday before Oklahoma County District Court Judge Susan Stallings.
The judge did not buy the argument, however.
“There is absolutely no constitutional right to engage in an activity of animal cruelty, which is cockfighting, and for that reason, the court is going to deny the motion to dismiss,” Stallings said Friday.
Stallings’ ruling cleared the way for Grino’s scheduled trial to begin Monday. However, Stallings had another case arise, meaning Grino’s trial would have had to be heard by a different judge. After discussing the situation with Coyle over the weekend, Grino opted to agree to the negotiated settlement that means no jail time and no criminal record if he does not commit a crime during the next three years.
“I think the laws are broken,” Grino said after Monday’s court appearance locking in the deal. “Oklahoma values animal rights more than human rights.”
Grino was stopped in April 2023 for a traffic offense in Pottawatomie County. Police said an officer found a box designed to transport game birds used for cockfighting, as well as accessories used in cockfighting. Officers contacted Oklahoma County authorities who, after seeing roosters and hens on the outside of his property, called Oklahoma City’s animal welfare office.
“I get pulled over with a box and gaffs, which is not illegal, and I get charged for animal cruelty with an animal that they’re charging me that I didn’t even have in possession,” Grino said. “So, they go to my house like Nazis and raid my house. They check my animals — they’re healthy, nothing wrong. I don’t get them back.”
Oklahoma County Assistant District Attorney David Batton said Monday’s plea agreement constituted the best way to dispose of the three-year-old case.
“He’s not contesting any of our evidence,” Batton said after the hearing. “The court finds him guilty based on a factual basis. Part of the reason is this is a three-year-old case already. He’s already forfeited his 93 animals, which was a significant cost to him. He’s not been in any other trouble since the three years. So, we put him on another three-year probation (and he is) under supervision for the first year.”
If Grino violates the terms of his probation, which includes abstaining from anything to do with cockfighting, he could face up to 10 years in prison, Batton said.
“He’s not off the hook yet,” Batton said. “But we’ve got this reasonable solution to what’s going on. We didn’t catch him in a cockfight (but) the animal welfare officers identified all these things that you don’t do.”
For instance, Batton said it does not get cold enough in Oklahoma for the roosters’ combs and wattles to be cut or trimmed like they were.
“So, when you cut the comb off and take the wattles off the side, you’re gearing them up for a fight,” Batton said. “When you cut the spur off, there’s no legitimate reason to do any of that unless they’re fighting.”
After a court appearance Oct. 16, Grino said he sold his birds to breeders who wanted them “for food stock or show stuff.” On Monday, he acknowledged that he cuts the combs and wattles off his roosters and trims their spurs.
“That’s how you’re supposed to take care of those animals,” he said. “The spurs are sharp. They grow every day like toenails, and the wattles and combs you have to cut because they’ll get frostbitten. And it’s for poultry show exhibition anyway.”
Kevin Chambers, the Oklahoma state director for Animal Wellness Action, drove to OKC from Tulsa on Monday with the expectation of watching Grino go to trial. He disagreed with Grino’s explanation and claim that he has nothing to do with cockfighting.
“That’s nonsense,” Chambers said. “The only shows in Oklahoma are staged by cockfighters once or twice a year so that they can say that they had a show.”
Chambers said tens of thousands of fighting roosters are still being raised in Oklahoma despite a 2002 state question that outlawed cockfighting.
“A lot of them are shipped to Mexico and to the Philippines, but a lot of them end up in the cockfights on weekends in Oklahoma and nearby states,” he said.
Chambers, who presented to the state District Attorneys Council about cockfighting in September, said he has gone to multiple cockfights in Oklahoma, sometimes wearing a camera and turning over evidence to prosecutors.
“We know that some of the people that are raising the birds are there fighting the birds because they have to prove that they have the best birds in order to sell them for the $2,000 apiece that they sell them for,” he said. “So, we know what’s going on, and it’s an underground industry in Oklahoma.”
Chambers said he was disappointed with Grino’s lenient sentence but conceded that cockfighting is a difficult crime to prove.
“We all know practically what they’re doing with these fighting roosters, these specific breeds that they’re raising,” Chambers said. “There’s no outlet or use for them otherwise. However, from a legal standpoint, you’ve got to find the birds and the weapons together.”
Chambers noted that more cockfighting-related cases have been going to court in recent years.
“But now citizens are reporting it to us,” he said. “We’re getting lots of tips. People don’t like what they see, and we’re busting more cockfights, and we’re optimistic that courts will start taking it more seriously. But we’re very anxious for that to happen.”
Chambers said he would like to see the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office investigate cockfighting in Oklahoma.
“It’s going to take a statewide effort by those in law enforcement to really make headway,” Chambers said.
In September, when Chambers presented to the DAC, Attorney General Gentner Drummond was in attendance, but he said he had not “taken the time to look into that area yet.”
“I trust these [district attorneys] to do the right thing,” Drummond said.
Chambers said the situation is especially frustrating when Anthony DeVore, the founder and president of the former Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission — a group that sought to decriminalize cockfighting — pleaded no contest last month to a misdemeanor charge of being a spectator at a cockfight and received a six-month deferred sentence and a $100 fine. Chambers said he saw DeVore take part in a cockfight in McIntosh County last summer.
“I see it with my own eyes, and yet he gets off with basically a $100 fine and probation, and then he’s running for state representative,” Chambers said. “That’s frustrating because they are people that know they are breaking the law, yet they continue to do it. And they’ll continue to do it because it’s lucrative, because of the gambling involved. They’ll continue to do it until the courts make it too costly for them.”
Cockfighting is a blood sport made felonious by 56 percent of Oklahomans in 2002. The issue briefly resurfaced as a hot political issue at the Legislature in 2023 and 2024 when HB 2530, which would have let county voters decrease penalties to misdemeanors, passed the House of Representatives with the support of then-Speaker Charle McCall. The bill never was taken up by the Senate.
Grino still raising roosters, hens at Newalla home
Grino and his wife were charged in Oklahoma County District Court in May 2023. Grino, 51, was named in all 59 cockfighting-related counts filed by District Attorney Vicki Behenna. Grino and his wife also were charged with one count of keeping a place, equipment or facility to be used in permitting cockfighting. They were accused of having cockfighting equipment at their home, about one mile north of Interstate 40 near Harrah Road in Newalla.
After a preliminary hearing Sept. 10, 2024, Grino was ordered to stand trial on just one of the counts: possession of birds with the intent to engage in cockfighting. Before that hearing got underway, prosecutors announced they were dismissing 56 of the charges originally filed against him. That resulted in Grino facing three charges, and after a 90-minute hearing, Oklahoma County Special Judge Jason Glidewell ruled that prosecutors had failed to prove probable cause in the animal cruelty charge and the charge of keeping a place, equipment or facility to be used in permitting cockfighting, which had been filed against both defendants.
In a detail underscored with irony by the animal cruelty charge, Grino said he never was told what happened to the birds government agents seized from his property in 2023.
An Oklahoma City animal welfere officer said during Grino’s preliminary hearing that a price of more than $50,000 seemed to be a fair figure for the birds. Asked what happened to the game fowl that were seized, the officer said they were given to a rescue group, which was going to rehabilitate them and put them up for adoption. But asked by NonDoc in December 2024 about the birds’ status, the OKC Animal Welfare Department never provided information on their whereabouts.
Grino said that when he inquired about the status of his chickens a week after they were seized, he was told he could have them back if he paid a $7,000 bill to cover the cost of feeding the birds during that time. He said that amount was excessive, arguing it would have cost him about $300 to feed his birds for a week.
Grino said that, since the April 2023 seizure of his birds, he again is raising gamefowl on his property. He said he found it odd that he never encountered problems when he had about 40 roosters within Oklahoma City limits, where he lived from 2008 through 2022 when he and his family moved to Newalla.
Grino said Monday he currently has about 30 roosters and hens on his property.
Coyle, Grino’s attorney, said there never was any evidence that Grino had been involved in cockfighting or that cockfighting activities occurred on his property.
“It’s not like they observed his chickens being sold to someone that fought them or observed him going to a cockfight or anything like that,” Coyle said Monday. “I mean, if there’s a cockfight and you bust a cockfight, that’s a different game. But here, when you just use your investigative powers to determine whether — or what you believe is cockfighting — (it) is a stretch.”
In a separate cockfighting criminal case elsewhere in Oklahoma, former McIntosh County Sheriff Jeff Coleman is facing a charge of cruelty to animals in Cherokee Nation District Court for allegedly hosting a cockfight. His next court date is set for May 12.
