A 77-year-old Goose Creek, South Carolina man, Loney Leroy Garrett, is due in court on 74 animal cruelty charges after authorities discovered 35 dogs on his property living in filthy, unsanitary conditions. Aldwin Roman of the Charleston Animal Society, who helped rescue and rehabilitate the surviving dogs, described what his team found: "They were skinny, they were sitting in filth, they were in raised hunting boxes that had not been cleaned. They weren't getting clean water; some of the boxes were too small for the dogs to normally stand in." The bodies of animals that hadn't survived were also found on the property.

This isn't Garrett's first offense. He pleaded guilty to federal animal cruelty charges in 2015 and served two years in prison, followed by three years of probation, according to independent rescuer Jennifer Gillentine, who said he "continuously starved these dogs to death over and over and over." Even with that conviction on record, nothing stopped him from acquiring dozens more dogs and repeating the same abuse.

That's exactly the gap Riley's Act is meant to close. Introduced by U.S. Representative David Martin, the bill would create a national database tracking repeat animal cruelty offenders and prevent them from ever owning animals again. Without it, a conviction in one place does little to stop someone from getting new animals once their sentence is served, no matter how many times they've already been caught.

Garrett is set to face a jury trial, but the outcome of one case won't fix the larger problem. Sign the petition to pass Riley's Act now, before another convicted abuser gets the chance to do this all over again.