Day: August 12, 2002

Innocence Protection Act

The Washington Post recently reported on the progress of the Innocence Protection Act — a bill slowly winding its way through the Congress that would help convicts gain access to DNA evidence that might exonerate them.

The bill would offer federal funds to states to reform the way they collect, preserve and offer access to DNA evidence.

Since 1973, over 100 death row inmates have been released, many based on DNA evidence. But prisoners can find it difficult to obtain DNA evidence. In many cases, the DNA evidence simply hasn’t been preserved. In other cases, prisoners have already exhausted all appeals and find it difficult to convince courts to let them test DNA evidence.

This is good as far as it goes, but it ignores the fact that in some cases people have been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death where DNA evidence was not the determining factor in overturning a conviction. DNA testing will reduce certain types of wrongful convictions, but the entire system will still be fundamentally prone to error as the last half century of overturned convictions has proven.

A better option would be to simply eliminate the death penalty. Libertarians should be at the forefront of the effort — the state should not be in the business of killing its own citizens.

Source:

Death row legislation gains support on Hill. Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, July 22, 2002.

Reuters: Black September Was Guerilla Group

On September 5, 1972, Palestinian terrorists killed two Israeli Olympic athletes and took nine others hostage. In a later shootout, all the remaining Israeli athletes and officials as well as the terrorists were killed.

In a story on the accomplishments of a contemporary Israeli athlete, Reuters describes that attack this way,

Members of the Palestinian Black September guerrilla group broke into the nearby Olympic village in the attack on September 5, 1972.

Reuters unwillingness to call a terrorist a terrorist borders on depravity.

Source:

Israelis Remember Victims of 1972 Olympics Massacre. Patrick Vignal, Reuters, August 11, 2002.

Fund for Animals Can't Shoot Straight on Worst Canned Hunts

The Fund for Animals today sent out a press release listing the “Top Ten States with the Cruelest Canned Hunts.” According to The Fund,

The states making The Fund’s “top ten” list are: Texas, Michigan,
Florida, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Ohio, Maine, Missouri, New Mexico,
Tennessee, Kentucky, and Louisiana. Although advertised under a variety
of names—most frequently “hunting preserves,” “game ranches,” or
“shooting preserves”—canned hunts violate the hunting community’s
standard of “fair chase” by confining animals to cages or fenced
enclosures. The types of animals killed can range from native species
such as elk and deer to exotic animals such as zebras, Corsican rams,
blackbuck antelope, and water buffalo.

Apparently compiling that list of ten states stretched The Fund for Animals’ limited research capabilities. A few hours after releasing it, Fund media coordinator Tracey McIntire was forced to send out a correction that read,

The list of the states with the worst canned hunts should NOT include
New Mexico and Kentucky.

Oops. No word on which states would take New Mexico and Kentucky’s places. The odds are good, however, that The Fund for Animals would be well at home on a list of top 10 animal rights groups that can never seem to get their act together.

Sources:

The Fund For Animals Announces The Top Ten States With The Cruelest Canned Hunts. The Fund for Animals, Press Release, August 12, 2002.

Correction on press release. Tracey McIntire, The Fund for Animals, August 12, 2002.

Appeals Court Finds for PETA in Reversing Lower Court Decision

A lawsuit filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 2001 against Taylorsville, Utah, police is headed back to the U.S. District Court in Utah after an appeals court reversed a district court verdict against the animal rights groups.

The lawsuit stems from a Jan. 20, 1999 protest that PETA organized at Eisenhower Junior High School in Taylorsville, Utah (but remember, PETA doesn’t target children according to Ingrid Newkirk).

Taylorsville police had arrested two PETA protestors on Jan. 6 for attempting to remove a McDonald’s banner that was flying on the school flagpole. At the Jan. 20 protest, police told protestors they had two choices — either disburse or face arrest.

PETA filed suit a week later, and in June 2001 the U.S. District Court agreed with police and the school that PETA’s protestors violated a state law making it illegal to disrupt school.

In reversing that decision, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law applied only to colleges, not to junior high schools. PETA will be allowed to ask for damages, but will be barred from challenging the law itself since the appellate court ruled “there is no credible threat of prosecution under the statute for any future protests at Eisenhower.”

The appellate court disagreed with PETA’s contention that since its protest was timed to coincide with the end of the school day that its activity was not disruptive, but it agreed with PETA that the school and police had failed to provide any evidence that the protest disrupted the school’s activities, noting that the heavy presence of several police squad cars and a helicopter was at least as distracting as the PETA protest.

Source:

Appeals court backs animal activists in protest. Matt Canham, The Salt Lake Tribune, August 8, 2002.

Animal Rights Activists Steal Aged Galah from Australian Pet Store

A couple weeks ago, two animal rights activists swiped a 32-year-old galah parrot from an Australian pet store. The activists, identified as two women in their 50s by a witness, left pamphlets at the scene that advocated freeing birds from their cages. The pamphlets were printed by the World League for the Protection of Animals, which denied it had any involvement in the theft of the animal.

The thieves sent a letter to The Daily Telegraph in Sydney claiming they had liberated the bird from its “prison-like existence” at the pet store, and was now free to live out his life in a larger aviary.

World League for the Protection of Animals Joan Papayanni told The Daily Telegraph that, “It [liberating a 32-year-old bird] would be the last things from our minds. This bird wouldn’t survive [in the wild]. We don’t like the idea of birds in cages, but only a fool would say a bird in a cage for 30 years should be let out.”

The bird has becoming something of a celebrity, with anonymous individuals posting a reward of AUS $7,000 for the return of the animal.

Sources:

Hector thieves make contact. Stavro Sofios, The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), August 7, 2002.

Hunt for misguided animal lovers. Stavro Sofios, The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), August 7, 2002.

Huntingdon Life Sciences Once Again Profitable

At the end of July, Huntingdon Life Sciences (now Life Sciences Research) announced its first profitable quarter in years. The company reported net income of $2.9 million for the quarter ending June 30, 2002, compared to a net loss of $1.7 million during the same period in 2001.

For the first six months of 2002, HLS sustained a loss of $400,000 compared to a loss of $6 million in the first six months of 2001.

Total revenues at the drug testing company were up 19% in the second quarter over a year ago and the company reported it currently has a backlog of testing.

This after Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty has spent the last 12 months claiming the company was on the verge of imploding.

Cass believes that SHAC’s campaign is beginning to lose steam as it fails to achieve its goal and is widely perceived as endorsing terrorism in its campaign against HLS. Citing a rally in Cambridge where SHAC talked of as many as 1,000 protesters but where only 200 or so people showed up,

The demonstration at the weekend shows that support is waning, and the rank and file [animal rights activists] are beginning to stand up and say that this is not what peaceful protest is about. The campaign leadership is losing credibility.

Cass also had some unkind — but accurate — words for the numerous banks, market makers and brokers who abandoned the firm due to pressure from SHAC,

We were very disappointed that there are people in the City who should give in to terrorism, on a relatively minor scale, so easily. They seemed to think: ‘Here’s a small company, let’s just dump them and have the problem go away.’

In fact, the problem has not gone away and the movement has got more aggressive as they realized the effective, intimidatory power they had. Perhaps if the financial community had stood more firm all the other individual investors and shareholders and members of staff would not have suffered as much harassment as they have done.

Assuming that HLS is able to maintain its profitability over the rest of the year, Cass is right that interest in the campaign is likely to wane, but it is also likely to become more militant as the hardcore activists see illegal actions as their only effective avenue. Expect more actions like the smoke grenade bombings at those Seattle office towers.

Sources:

Huntingdon about to step back from brink. Alex Jackson-Proes. The Daily Telegraph (London), July 29, 2002.

How Cass brought Huntingdon back to life. Lauren Mills, Sunday Telegraph (London), July 28, 2002.

LSR Announces Second Quarter Results. Life Sciences Research, Press Release, July 31, 2002.