In Los Angeles earlier this month, a legal case that had drawn worldwide publicity finally ended when a superior court judge threw the book at the man everybody loved to hate: Andrew Burnett, convicted in June of animal cruelty for grabbing a woman's dog from her car after a minor accident and tossing it into traffic on a San Jose expressway last year. The dog -- a fluffy white bichon frise named Leo -- died, and now Burnett faces three years in prison, the maximum sentence allowed under California law.

That may have ended the case, but it hasn't ended the debate that flared when the incident first made headlines nearly 18 months ago. In fact, the stiff sentence has started it up all over again, pitting triumphant animal-rights advocates against those who think Burnett has been treated too harshly. Feelings continue to run high.

At one extreme is the view expressed last week in a surprisingly emotional statement by Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia. "It was not just road rage," Mr. Byrd told the Senate, "it was bestial cruelty. . . . It was an act of sheer depravity to seize a fluffy, furry, innocent little dog and toss it on a roadway, . . . most certainly to be crushed under tons of onrushing steel, iron, glass and rubber, while its terrified owner, and perhaps other people in other vehicles, watched."

At the other extreme is the view that press and public alike blew Burnett's crime out of all proportion, a misapplication of sentiment that was reflected in the severity of his sentence. According to the cynics -- obviously, unlike the senator, not dog lovers themselves -- there are two things wrong here. First, they say, it was just a dog. Where is the outrage about the human lives lost every day in America's cities to outbursts of anger and greed? Where is the fairness, when rapists with good lawyers get less time in jail? Second, they argue, people were only upset about Leo because he was, as one commentator put it, "not just a dog, but an unbearably adorable dog," making Burnett perhaps the first man in America to be jailed for "crimes against cuteness." The implication is clear: If the man had tossed a mongrel or a pet rat or even a cat into the traffic, it wouldn't have seemed so heinous.

The judge did not get into this debate. Steering clear of the issue of Burnett's victim, he called the crime "a case of rage-induced violence" and justified the penalty by saying he was concerned that Burnett, who had reportedly beaten another dog to death some years ago, could harm a human being next time. Prosecutors agreed, citing evidence of a link between cruelty to animals and subsequent violence against people. In apparent recognition of this, 36 U.S. states now mete out felony-level penalties for animal cruelty.

Yet, although the judge did not get into this either, there is reason to think those new laws reflect other trends as well, trends that help explain the remarkable degree of public interest in Leo's case, even in places as distant and distinct from America as Japan. Besides the obvious ones (tensions engendered by urban living and overcrowded roads, episodes of irrational social violence and so on), Leo's demise and Burnett's sentencing brought two other phenomena into focus: the changing relationship between people and their pets (especially visible here, where many pet owners seem unable to distinguish between animals and children); and changing perceptions of animals' place in the general scheme of things.

The former trend has its regrettable aspects, but the latter has contributed to such laudable movements as the rise in vegetarianism, worldwide antifur and antivivisection protests, zoo reform, moves to ban fox hunting in Britain, laws to preserve endangered species, regulation of the pet trade and legislative action in Europe and America to improve the conditions in which animals are raised and slaughtered for food. Common to all of them is a still largely unarticulated conviction that the line between animal species and Homo Sapiens is both artificial and unsustainable. As the planet shrinks and overheats, the ancient Buddhist precept seems increasingly apposite: All living things deserve respect and protection. Hence, in part, the uproar over Leo. Even many of those who balked at Leo's owner's description of him as her "beloved child" seem to agree that Burnett should be punished for having broken what amounts to a new taboo.

Here in Japan, though pets are ubiquitous and pet stores are coming under growing governmental scrutiny, the laws do not generally reflect the most recent thinking on animal rights. While Leo's case raises more questions than it answers, it may do some good if it at least gets people thinking. For now, we're with the senator: A dog's life -- any animal's life -- just isn't what it used to be.