The operator of a no-kill animal rescue shelter in Makaha is not responsible for the condition of the dogs seized from his family’s property in 2016 because people dropped off their old, sick and injured pets at the shelter at all hours of the day, oftentimes anonymously, the operator’s lawyer told a state jury.

“Being an open-door animal rescue shelter, Friends For Life does not close its doors at night,” attorney Harrison Kiehm told the jury Tuesday.

Kiehm represents David “Lanny” Moore, the current president of Friends For Life. Moore and his mother, June Moore, are on trial on one count of misdemeanor animal cruelty for each of 24 dogs seized by Hawaiian Humane Society investigators in October 2016. The charges accuse the Moores of intentionally, knowingly or recklessly depriving a pet animal of necessary sustenance or causing the deprivation.

The Moores were originally charged with one count for each of 310 animals seized from their property. The 24 remaining counts involve the dogs whose condition were among the worse.

“They were skin and bones,” Deputy Prosecutor Janice Futa told the jurors in the trial’s opening statement’s Tuesday. “Had they received adequate food, adequate water, many of these dogs would have been fine,” Futa said.

David Moore was the treasurer and a director of the shelter when Honolulu police raided the Moores’ 2-acre property on Oct. 12, 2016. June Moore was the president and a director. Her lawyer Samson Shigetomi told the jury that she was president in name only because she had already turned over control of the shelter to her son.

“Due to (her) health and her husband’s health concerns she was no longer the active president she used to be,” Shigetomi said.

Ten Humane Society investigators accompanied police onto the Makaha property. Futa described for the jury what the investigators found, then played a video recorded by Humane Society Field Services Manager Harold Han.

Futa said the investigators and police could smell the stench of feces and urine even before they entered the property and it got worse the farther they went in. She said the dogs’ barking was incessant and unrelenting.

The video shows dogs running freely, dogs tethered under make-shift shelters and dogs in kennels and wire cages. Many of the kennels and cages had more than one dog in them and some of the cages were stacked on others.

“There were dogs which were crammed together in a small space, so small that they couldn’t turn, sit, lie or do anything without touching their kennel mate,” Futa said.

She said there was the body of a puppy that had died from canine parvovirus infection in the same cage with its live sibling and mother. The surviving puppy later succumbed to parvovirus infection.

Futa said there were dogs missing patches of fur because of skin infection and at least one who was so infested with parasites that ticks completely covered the inside of its ears.

The video showed investigators carrying a dog on a stretcher. Futa said the dog couldn’t move due to a debilitating physical condition.

Kiehm said there wasn’t water or food in the dog bowls because Honolulu police officers showed up at the Moores’ property about 6 a.m., long before volunteers watered and fed the dogs and cleaned up their living areas as part of their daily routine. He said David Moore emptied the bowls at night to keep rats away.

Because of the large number of animals on the property, it took two days to seize them all. There were 312 animals including six rabbits. The Moores agreed to relinquish any claim to them in 2017 to allow the Humane Society to put them up for adoption.