Month: July 2005

PETA Protests Circus; Concedes It Does Not Know of Any Instances of Abuse

On July 19, four animal rights activists work with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals stood outside the Evergreen State Fairgrounds in Monroe, Washington, complaining about the abuse that animals face in circuses. Unfortunately, even PETA had to concede it didn’t know of a single instance of animal abuse by the Circus Gatti.

Protester Cari McCole, 19, told the Monroe Herald that,

I thought we should come out and let people know what’s going on and educate them about animal abuse.

Hmm But, the newspaper reported (emphasis added),

The protest was organized in cooperation with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, an animal rights group based in Norfolk, Va., McCole said. They plan to continue the protest through Thursday, she [McCole] said.

Lisa Wathne, a PETA specialist in captive exotic animals, said the group opposes circuses in general, but isn’t aware of any specific animal abuse history involving Circus Gattie at the Monroe fairgrounds.

Using that sort of logic, one might argue that some animal rights activists engage in terrorism. I can’t think of a single instance of Wathne committing such an act, but she should be banned on principle from public appearances.

Gotta love that animal rights logic.

Source:

Activists protest circus in Monroe. Yoshiaki Nohara, Monroe Herald, July 20, 2005.

Washington State Sen. Wants Bestiality Ban — Don’t Tell Ingrid!

After a man died on July 2 after having sex with a horse at a farm near Enumclaw, Washington, state Sen. Pam Roach introduced a bill that would make bestiality a Class C felony in that state, punishable by up to five years in jail and a $100,000 fine.

Did Roach run this by everyone’s favorite animal rights crusader Ingrid Newkirk? After all, Newkirk’s on record as saying there’s nothing inherently abusive about bestiality,

If a girl gets sexual pleasure from riding a horse, does the horse suffer? If not, who cares? If you French kiss your dog and he or she thinks it’s great, is it wrong? We believe all exploitation and abuse is wrong. If it isn’t exploitation and abuse, it may not be wrong.

So far there’s no evidence that the horse suffered in the Enumclaw incident. It might just meet Newkirk’s criteria for being non-abusive (at least for the horse).

The odd thing is that, according to the Associated Press, bestiality is explicitly illegal in only 30 states. In the Enumclaw case, local police knew of the farm’s reputation for offering animals for sex, but had no authority to do anything about it (besides, they didn’t want to piss off Newkirk).

Given the almost universal revulsion at bestiality, its odd explicit bans aren’t routinely in place as part of other sex crimes packages.

Source:

Roach seeks law against bestiality. Associated Press, July 19, 2005.

Prosecutor in KFC Supplier Case Receives Threats from Animal Rights Extremists

WAVE 3 TV reported recently that a special prosecutor assigned to look at allegations of animal cruelty at Pilgrim’s Pride — which supplies chickens to KFC — has received so many threats that an FBI agent has been assigned the task of investigating each of them.

In 2004, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals made public a videotape showing employees of Pilgrim’s Pride in West Virginia kicking, stomping and slamming chickens against walls. In January 2005, however, special prosecutor Ginny Conley announced she wasn’t bringing charges because the videotape was so dark and grainy it was impossible to identify specific individuals for prosecution. She also cited concern that since the alleged abuse took place at a slaughterhouse, that it wasn’t covered by the state’s animal cruelty statutes.

Conley subsequently received enough additional information against those in the video to take her case to a grand jury in June. The grand jury, however, refused to indict the identified individuals.

Pilgrim’s Pride fired 11 people connected to the incidents on the videotape.

Conley told the Associated Press and WAVE 3 TV that she regularly receives harassing e-mails and letters from animal rights extremists, some of which include threats. She told WAVE 3,

There was even an FBI person provided to me to monitor it because the harassment got to such a level.

PETA, for its part, stuck with its “we don’t condone it, but we really do” line. PETA’s Dan Shannon told WAVE TV that PETA doesn’t condone the threats, but added that,

At the same time, you can understand how somebody would be so upset by these animals being tortured and abused, thrown against walls and torn apart. They might be moved with that level of passion.

Reminds me of the time that Shannon said PETA didn’t condone throwing fake blood at KFC’s CEO, while Bruce Friedrich was off doing just that.

The kicker is that Conley told the Associated Press that the harassment from animal rights activists made it harder to focus on making a case against the Pilgrim’s Pride workers,

Special prosecutor Ginny Conley had previously said she had no evidence to warrant criminal charges, but said Wednesday that more evidence had been found that persuaded her to present the case to a grand jury. Pressure from the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals did little to sway her, she said.

“In fact, if anything, the harassment I received from PETA was very intrusive on me performing my duties as prosecutor,” said Conley. “However, after I gained the additional information I received, I felt it at least warranted presentation to the citizens of Hardy County.”

Sources:

PETA supporters upset workers on video abusing chickens won’t be charged. Erick Flack, WAVE TV 3, July 19, 2005.

Jury Won’t Indict Chicken Plant Workers. Associated Press, June 8, 2005.

Supreme Court Case Forces Prosecutor’s to Drop Charges Against Animal Rights Extremists

Federal prosecutors announced in July that a 2003 Supreme Court decision forced them to drop four extortion charges against animal rights extremist Peter Daniel Young. Young, 27, was indicted in 1998 and accused of several fur farm break-ins. He was captured earlier this year after 7 years on the run.

Young had originally been charged with four counts of extortion using the same legal theory that had led to a novel civil lawsuit against anti-abortion activists. That theory attempted to stretch the definition of extortion to include criminal acts that were designed to drive a legal establishment, such as an abortion clinic, out of business.

The National Organization for Women won a civil racketeering lawsuit against anti-abortion extremist Joe Scheidler. NOW argued that Scheidler had engaged in pattern of encouraging and participating in numerous criminal acts designed to shut down abortion clinics. Like the animal rights extremists, the anti-abortion extremists used violence, threats, and harassment to intimidate their targets.

But in 2003, the Supreme Court by an 8-1 vote overturned the judgment against Scheidler, saying that regardless of what Scheidler may have done, he did not commit extortion because he did not “obtain” property from his targets which is required by federal law for the crime of extortion to have occurred. The majority opinion said that,

It is undisputed that petitioners interfered with, disrupted, and in some instances completely deprived respondents of their ability to exercise their property rights. Likewise, petitioners’ counsel has acknowledged that aspects of his clients’ conduct were criminal. But even when their acts of interference and disruption achieved their ultimate goal of shutting down an abortion clinic, such acts did not constitute extortion because petitioners did not “obtain” respondents’ property. Petitioners may have deprived or sought to deprive respondents of their alleged property right of exclusive control of their business assets, but they did not acquire any such property. They neither pursued nor received “something of value from” respondents that they could exercise, transfer, or sell. United States v. Nardello, 393 U. S. 286, 290. To conclude that their actions constituted extortion would effectively discard the statutory “obtaining” requirement and eliminate the recognized distinction between extortion and the separate crime of coercion.

In his lone dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens argued the court had interpreted the statutes too narrowly, writing,

For decades federal judges have uniformly given the term “property” an expansive construction that encompasses the intangible right to exercise exclusive control over the lawful use of business assets. The right to serve customers or to solicit new business is thus a protected property right. The use of violence or threats of violence to persuade the owner of a business to surrender control of such an intangible right is an appropriation of control embraced by the term “obtaining.” That is the commonsense reading of the statute that other federal judges have consistently and wisely embraced in numerous cases that the Court does not discuss or even cite. Recognizing this settled definition of property, as I believe one must, the conclusion that petitioners obtained this property from respondents is amply supported by the evidence in the record.

The 2003 decision is why there have been no similar substantive RICO prosecutions of animal rights extremists. When federal prosecutors decided to indict extremists connected with Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, they wisely chose to go after them for interstate stalking and conspiracy to commit same.

In light of the Scheidler decision, prosecutors in the Young case had no option but to drop the charges.

The solution to Scheidler case, by the way, is to petition Congress to alter the Hobbs act to make Stevens point explicit that a criminal conspiracy to deny access to legitimate business or other assets is included in the definition of extortion. Until then, the current federal approach of using federal statutes against interstate stalking is the best option available.

Unfortunately, the four counts of extortion filed against Young were the main charges against him. All prosecutors have left are two misdemeanor charges of violating the Animal Enterprise Act which each carry only one year in prison.

Source:

Feds drop extortion charges against accused mink farm raider. Associated Press, Todd Richmond, July 22, 2005.

AVMA Rejects Foie Gras Resolution

In July, the American Veterinary Medical Association’s House of Delegates unanimously rejected a proposed resolution condemning foie gras production. The rejected resolution read,

RESOLVED that the AVMA hereby opposes the practice of force feeding ducks and geese to produce foie gras.

In a press release, the AVMA said,

In their discussion, the HOD (House of Delegates) considered their obligations to animals, society, and veterinary medicine. However, because limited peer-reviewed, scientific information dealing with the animal welfare concerns associated with foie gras production is available, and because the observations and practical experience of HOD members indicate a minimum of adverse effects on the birds involved, the HOD did not support the resolution opposing force feeding used to produce foie gras.

“We’ve looked at the science and current production practices, and have found it is not necessary for the AVMA to take a position either for or against foie gras production at this time,” said Dr. Bonnie Beaver, AVMA President.

Source:

AVMA House of Delegates Defeats Foie Gras Resolution. Press Release, American Veterinary Medical Association, July 16, 2005.

Profile of Researcher Who Spent Six Months in Jail to Protect Rodney Coronado

This month Alta Mira press published Skidmore College professor Rik Scarce’s book Contempt of Court: A Scholar’s Battle for Free Speech from Behind Bars describing the six months Scarce spent in jail for refusing to testify to a grand jury about his interviews with Rodney Coronado.

When he was a doctoral student at Washington State University, Scarce interviewed Coronado as part of research he was doing for his book, Eco-Warriors. Apparently, Scarce liked to keep his friend close and his research subjects closer, as Coronado was house-sitting for Scarce when the Animal Liberation Front broke into a lab at Washington State in 1991 and caused more about $150,000 in damages.

Not surprisingly, Scarce was subpoenaed in 1993 to testify before the grand jury investigating the Washington State attack. When he refused to answer questions put to him by the grand jury, U.S. District Court Judge William Fremming ordered Scarce jailed for contempt of court. Scarce remained imprisoned for 159 days when the judge decided further incarceration was unlikely to lead to Scarce testifying.

The Washington State University break-in was never solved.

Scarce’s story is, of course, interesting in part due to the recent jailing of New York Time’s reporter Judith Miller over her refusal to divulge information about sources to a grand jury investigating the disclosure of a CIA agent’s identity. This writer believes that there should simply be no shield protecting journalists or researchers from divulging information in the investigation of a crime. Scarce’s position is even more ridiculous, given that he clearly had a personal relationship with Coronado beyond any interviews he did with Coronado for his research (in fact, Scarce refused to even testify if he’d ever had any confidential conversations with Coronado, much less what those conversations might have included).

Scarce deserved the censure and imprisonment he received for trying to shield Coronado.

In an odd twist, after receiving his PhD, Scarce ended up teaching for a while at Michigan State University — Coronado, of course, was ultimately convicted of firebombing at lab at the university.

But Coronado’s subsequent conviction and advocacy of violence don’t stop Scarce and Coronado from getting together when the two appear the same animal rights extremist conferences. According to a 2004 State News article,

Last year, Scarce was reacquainted with Coronado for the first time in more than 10 years at a “Revolutionary Environmentalism” conference in California.

. . .

At that conference, Scarce spent about an hour with Coronado in his hotel room, getting reacquainted.

“We had just the most wonderful talk,” Scarce said. “He is continuing to think deeply about the environmental movement and what it is all about.”

Yeah, that must have been a scintillating conversation.

Sources:

‘Scared to death,’ but kept his word. Dennis Yusko, Times Union, July 22, 2005.

Can Scholars Protect Confidential Sources? Peter Monaghan, The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 7, 1999.