Not really sure what to put here…I usually put relevant excerpts, but that got this post deleted for doing that
Laura Passaglia, the Sonoma County Superior Court judge who presided over the trial, barred Hsiung from showing most evidence of animal cruelty, depriving him of the ability to show his motives for entering the farms.
What a bitch.
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What part of “the whole truth” does that judge not fucking understand?
The part where she either:
A. Is literally being paid to look the other way
or
B. Doesn’t want anything to come to light that could affect her way of life
Or any combination of those
Or she’s just a bitch
I’d go with A and C there. The whole county is apparently in bed with these massive farms.
I hate this but I think the judge is trying to keep the crimes seperate. The trial is not about what illegal things the farm was doing, it was a trial about this person breaking the law when they broke into the farm. I don’t know what the laws are exactly where this is but a lot of the time animals are owned which puts them in the category of property but with special protections. So the judge is looking at it from you broke into someone’s property to take video or whatever of someone treating their property poorly. I hate this because without doing this it’s incredibly hard to get evidence while going through the process legally. It’s usually setup in a way that gives ample opportunity for the offender to hide any wrong doing before inspection or other laws that hinder the animal rights people. If a police officer showed up without a warrant and walked in and collected evidence it probably couldn’t be used to prosecute them in court anyway so this is a bit like that. The judge might take the mitigating factors into consideration but the trial is still about them breaking into property illegally. The whole truth is primarily focused on the break in. Also this is pure speculation and I’m talking out of my ass, so would need someone who actually knows something to varify
California law is supposed to allow a necessity defense, the fact is they knew the farms were abusing animals (they had undercover people find employment with them and see first hand, which is legal and not trespassing) and they found the same abuse on the day.
You’re definitely allowed to break into a car to rescue a baby. You might also be allowed to break into a hot car to save a dog, in which case you should also be allowed to break into a poultry farm to save abused animals.
They didn’t deny they broke in, but said there was good reason. The judge refused to allow the reason to be heard, and furthermore refused to file briefs from legal experts. What’s more, the prosecutors declined to proceed with the various theft charges, instead opting for a misdemeanor trespassing charge and suping that up with a felony conspiracy charge. Making a felony out of a misdemeanor and not allowing the defense to be heard points to a coordinated attempt targeted solely at the leader of this campaign group.
Yeh, that sounds fucked. Thanks for filling me in. Also if I spent half the time reading the article and listening as I do getting carried away and writing a long winded reply I would probably be able to make a better assessment. Thank you again
You don’t get to break into a car and rehome the baby or dog. They trespassed, broke in, and stole property. If they don’t like the practice, laws, or enforcement of existing laws there are legal ways to change those things. Vigilante Justice isn’t the answer and this criminal isn’t innocent of any of the crimes he’s been found guilty of.
You can find the practice of the slaughter house reprehensible and still maintain a life as a functional law abiding citizen while working towards progress at the same time.
They trespassed, broke in, and stole property.
And yet, the prosecutors here explicitly dropped the charges for breaking and entering and theft. They only went for trespass.
This is because they successfully argued against the other crimes in other trials, and convinced juries that the animals weren’t actually worth anything because they were dead or half dead.
The prosecution intentionally went for the weakest charge, then inflated it into a federal charge, and the judge intentionally didn’t let them defend against it. That reeks of collusion, and a disgustingly biased judge.
The practice of slaughtering isn’t at issue here. The issue is the welfare of the animals while they’re alive.
this criminal isn’t innocent of any of the crimes he’s been found guilty of.
He did not plead innocent to the crime. He admitted to doing the thing that was a statutory offense. However, in fair court proceedings, you should be allowed to give “special reasons” - that is, you should be allowed to present to the court that it was necessary to cause a lesser harm in order to prevent a greater harm. If the court had considered this and ruled against him, that would be one thing, but they didn’t even allow anyone to listen to that argument. That makes the ruling objectively wrong.
Nobody that writes laws are interested in “the whole truth.”
Sorry, but that’s not how the law works - it doesn’t matter how morally justified a crime might be.
In California, where this happened, it actually does. Did you read the whole article?
DxE had obtained a legal opinion from Hadar Aviram, a professor at UC College of Law, San Francisco, saying that the activists had a valid defense for their actions because California law allows defendants to argue that they were providing aid to suffering animals out of necessity.
Furthermore, motivation is taken into consideration in many other cases across the US. For example, it is acceptable to break into someone’s car to save a baby locked inside. It may even be acceptable to break into a car to save a dog. In which case, it should be acceptable to break into a poultry farm to save abused animals.
The judge here refused to even allow this defense to be considered. She also refused to allow an amicus brief from another legal expert. This was all apparently part of a coordinated plan to slip through an overall unjust conviction and put the leader of this campaign group in jail - the local county is heavily in bed with these farms.
So I stand by my assertion, she is a bitch, and furthermore I think she is grossly unprofessional and should be disrobed.
Actually … it is. When a jury decides it’s sufficiently morally justified as to not be considered criminal, it’s called “Jury Nullification”
For those who aren’t necessarily concerned about a factory farm environment, they may not consider these animals as “valuable” enough to care.
However, to appeal to those people on a different level, that is the food you eat. And the people producing it are being very very very very protective about how it is produced. They are doing something to your food that they don’t want you to know about, and it certainly isn’t good that they’re trying to hide it.
Factory farming is a huge reason for disease outbreaks. Bird flu? Mad cow disease? Right here, folks. And they’ll package up your food without a thought other than the money they make from it.
Are you okay with the animals you eat living in conditions that could expose you to health risks? I hope you would be outraged if a food company was potentially putting you at risk because of their concern over their profits.
You should care.
Producing food is fucking hard work. I have a family farm where I raise my own beef and vegetables. It’s not easy. I grew up hating it because while I was working the garden, the tobacco and feeding cattle, my friends were doing fuck all.
The human race is so disconnected from their food supply it’s disgusting. People have no clue if someone took a dump beside their lettuce in the field or not. (This is how a lot of those vegetables get diseases when they do recalls.)
But, humans are lazy and want things easy. I wish everyone had to grow their own food for five years to see how difficult it is to feed your face, but it’s never gonna happen. People want the benefit of farming without doing any of the work.
I was gonna raise beef and sell it, but I’d rather just feed my family. Despite growing up hating farming, I have a better appreciation for my food and we need that shit everyday.
I think this is important. Being disconnected allows for a more wasteful consumer mindset.
When milk goes bad in the fridge, ehh, spend $3 and get another jug. But, when that jar of goats milk goes bad, or the cheese doesn’t work out from the goat in our backyard, it’s a little more upsetting, that took a lot of work…
My view, and several friends and family members is that if you are unwilling to personally kill an animal to eat it, you shouldn’t be eating meat. Some of these individuals are vegetarians, and others (myself included) are producing our own meat for our families as much as possible.
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By raise beef you mean raise cows through rape and then murder them or send them off to be murdered?
You don’t have to rape cows for meat, just for dairy. You can totally get beef without rape.
you don’t need to take cows for dairy, either
no one is raping cows
You should care.
There’s another aspect to it as well. My grandfather suffered from PTSD from working as a butcher almost his entire adult life - I’ve recently learned that it’s a pretty common thing for people working in abattoirs.
If they don’t care abuot the animals, they might (and that’s a very iffy “might”) care about the people.
I just want to point out that most butchers don’t work on the kill line. I can see PTSD being common there, but it is definitely not common for retail butchers. Most retail butchers don’t even see a carcass anymore.
The dxe is about STOPPING animal agriculture altogether, so…
Their ultimate motives don’t make the question any less valid.
We can’t even guarantee the welfare or basic human kindness towards people.
One step at a time.
Lots of people have it better then factory farms though.
You act like it’s mutually exclusive, when it just isn’t. And guess what? Not eating meat and consuming less animal produce is significantly easier than fighting injustice that happens in foreign countries.
Factory farming is a huge reason for disease outbreaks.
Yes
And they’ll package up your food without a thought other than the money they make from it.
No. Most people want to do good, they don’t want to hurt others. They don’t care about the lives of the animals, but most farmers, factory farmers included would hate to know that they led to people getting mad cow disease.
Most people want to do good, they don’t want to hurt others
Ordinary people are not rich capitalists who can earn massive profits by cutting corners. That’s not just against animals either, think of the conditions human workers have been subjected to.
Most people want to do good, they don’t want to hurt others.
That’s very… naïvely optimistic when it comes to big business.
I’m sure they’d be upset to know that they’d be losing money if a recall happens, but the vast majority of factory farms WILL cut corners dangerously close to make more money.
“Don’t get caught” is the golden rule for the bottom line.
You’re more than likely to go to prison for messing with the rich’s revenue streams.
painfully true
This has been true for a long time. Upton Sinclair, writing over 100 years ago about improving working conditions (for humans) ended up missing the mark and the end result was food quality regulations. Now, folks are trying to expose animal cruelty but end up getting stronger protections for corporations 🤡 we just can’t seem to care about living things 🙁
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Yes, as I said, and great quote to share!
It’s not illegal to “expose” animal cruelty in California, and no one has ever been charged with doing so. Animal cruelty is prosecuted all the time in California. The headline is stupid. The headline is wrong.
You an idiot. Read beyond the headline and you’ll see that in California activists are being charged for being attention to deplorable conditions in animal farms yet the farms they exposed have no charges against them.
was convicted of two counts of misdemeanor trespass and one count of felony conspiracy to trespass last week
Activists aren’t given carte blanche to break the law. That’s called vigilantism. And it’s illegal.
?
I was just showing one of many examples from the article that the activists weren’t “being charged for being attention to deplorable conditions in animal farms” but actual other crimes.
I was agreeing with you, sorry, should have been more specific!
felony conspiracy to trespass
Anyone know what the difference is between a misdemeanor conspiracy to trespass and a felony conspiracy to trespass?
The first sentence literally contradicts the headline. Headline says you could get in trouble for “exposing animal cruelty” while the first sentence says an activist is being charged for “rescuing animals.” They did more than just expose cruelty; they took it upon themselves to stop it and in doing so broke the law. That’s what they are being charged for; not the exposure to the cruelty which is only being exposed because these activists are being arrested for trespassing and theft and it made the news.
The headline is wrong. The headline is stupid.
Message board hypocrisy, a concerto in three movements:
-
Moderato: In which the villain claims someone who hasn’t read or understood the article is an idiot.
-
Adagio cantabile: the friendly townspeople read the article and lo! The villain himself did not understand the article!
-
Allegro scherzando: where it is revealed to all that, by their own criteria, the villain actually called themselves an idiot. Bravo!
-
There’s a bit of difference between “exposing animal cruelty” and stealing livestock.
Bit of a fucked up situation when conscious beings are considered property though.
My cat is a conscious being.
I still own her.
I also have a cat.
I am her legal custodian, she isn’t property.
I was just borrowing it osfficer
They were stealing sick livestock that had no commercial value.
Still, that’s a few steps further than just “exposing animal cruelty”.
Not saying what they did was wrong at all, but the headline is definitely clickbait.
(Note: I haven’t read past the headline or some of the comments, so I might be way off)
Juries didn’t view it as wrong in past court cases. This was the first one to land a conviction, and they did it by putting a gag order on all the footage the activists took, which in previous cases was instrumental in swaying juries.
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houses and cars are inanimate objects.
Juries acquited these activists of theft in previous cases, because they were shown footage of the awful condition the stolen animals were in. Which was why, in this case, the prosecutors dropped the theft charges, put a gag order on the footage, and instead threw a “felony conspiracy to commit trespassing” charge at the leader of the group, who didn’t even participate directly in stealing the animals.
Sentient beings are not houses or cars. If parents abuse their babies, they will get them taken from them. Same should apply to animals.
If parents abuse their babies, they will get them taken from them.
By the state after a detailed legal process, not some rando off the street after a beer.
But with animals, the state won’t help them. If a baby was being tortured and the state wouldn’t save them, how could you blame someone for taking it into their own hands?
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It is weird just how secretive the slaughterhouses are.
I don’t usually discuss this sort of thing very much with carnists IRL, because I tend to find their “arguments” and their positions rather tired and boring and in general completely irrational. The “but where do you get your protein?” type of questions or “I tried being a vegan/vegetarian but it didn’t agree with me because of my special DNA due to my ancestry of northern Europeans or whatever” conspiracy theories are especially fun. It’s usually the carnists that go out of their way to be activists about their choices, not me.
I’ll usually answer direct questions and leave it at that. I find there is a certain type of carnist that get especially defensive (almost always men suffering from toxic masculinity) around the very presence of veg*ns and want to get into arguments, especially while eating.
But there have been times where I’ve asked why slaughterhouses have so much secrecy in some of these “conversations” where the carnist just won’t drop the topic and I’ve noticed that gives them some pause. At least for a small glimmer of time. I think it is because these carnist activists are the ones with the most amount of guilt and they know that most (normal) people don’t want to witness what goes on in slaughterhouses…
Are slaughter houses secretive?
I was raised in an agriculture focused community and did the whole FFA thing in highschool. I’ve since moved to another state and am now living the life of a city slicker, so maybe I’ve just become out of touch, but back then none of the “how the sausage is made” stuff was hidden from us. Hell we had a whole field trip to tour a pair of meat processing plants (one for poultry, one for beef).
Have things changed over the last 5-10 years? Is my experience just an outlier?
I think they’re referring to this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag
Not necessarily the slaughtering part, but the living conditions that these animals are stuck in, sometimes for years, is barbaric. Imagine being in a cage where you can’t walk and you have to stand in your own shit for days on end.
The ethics of animal slaughter and how it’s done are almost a separate conversation imo. No living creature deserves to be tortured (and outright torture does occur, see Earthlings or Dominion for the details)
The ethics of animal slaughter and how it’s done are almost a separate conversation imo
It is a separate conversation, and I’m glad you pointed it out because it’s an important distinction and one that is far too frequently overlooked.
Bringing an animal into the world with the intent of later killing it when it is entirely unnecessary to do so seems a bit wrong no?
I dunno, maybe your state did not have ag-gag laws.
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people don’t want to witness what goes on in slaughterhouses
That’s exactly why they’re secretive. It’s also true of many other industries and processes. There are a lot of things we benefit from that have unpleasant origins. When it comes to meat, you can make a relatively easy choice about it.
My favourite kind of carnists are the ones who say “Because you eat none, I’m going to eat two hamburgers!”
Uh, okay. Is that supposed to spite me? Enjoy your heart attack, dickhead.
Oh, right. I didn’t even mention how the tired old Dad “jokes” get very boring, very fast. Especially when repeated nearly every time, by the same set of people, at almost every meal. That, or they nearly reflexively have to talk about how much they love meat, love to hunt, love to fish, love to grill, yadda yadda. No one brought up vegn anything mind you, it’s just the mere presence of any vegn(s) that seems to cause this…shrug.
In my country it’s not a secret how these places operate, I went to a slaughter house as a class trip back in high school + one of our relatives owns a massive chicken and cow farm. The animals’ conditions are vastly different here than what I see from these terrifying documentaries.
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Sounds like you are doing a lot. I have found the phrase “the personal is political” became a very real thing for me years ago even when I just started cutting out certain meats (!) - when it came to the reactions of others as they found out, and also realizing in a very visceral way, that, with every single meal, there was a very concrete ethical, ecological, economical and health decision to be made.
I quickly found out that you have to “come out” at work (when food is being ordered out, restaurants are being decided on, etc) and for extended family, etc., even though you really don’t want to necessarily answer all the questions, parry all the nonsense in that particular moment. Most people are fine, maybe a small subset groan and roll their eyes, but keep their opinions to themselves, but there is that small percentage that seem to keep harping on it.
I have seen similar reactions to early adopters of hybrid vehicles. Save for EVs later. Or, as a kid, when someone with a legit extreme dairy allergy refused all dairy. It’s like there is a certain type of personality that really gets actually offended when someone decides to deviate from whatever system is handed to them as “the norm”, whether it’s ridiculously high meat and dairy consumption (no matter how harmful it is to themselves, even), or a standard internal combustion engine. Some people seem to really get worked up about it.
Anyway, I do what I can. I have not removed all dairy entirely, nor eggs. I view both as rather harmful to health, given the information we have (and the evidence seems to keep piling up on that), so I don’t make them a central component in any meal. I never drank milk anyway even as an omnivore - it’s been fairly clear that they are marketing that stuff as a “health drink” (lol) for a reason. Sometimes it’s very difficult to assess whether a given food is vegan or even at least vegetarian, but labeling/awareness has grown with time, so that has gotten a bit easier.
I find that so weird and illogical, because what does anyone else’s personal and internal choices have to do with me? The only reason I could care would be if I invited you to dinner I was cooking myself and you waited until serving time to mention you don’t or can’t eat something, and that’s because I’d feel bad not being able to feed you. You are a grown ass man (place hyphen(s) wherever tickles your fancy), and get to make your own decisions and life choices. Plus there’s more for me.
Maybe it’s from growing up in the 90s and 00s, but asking about food allergies, sensitivities, and restrictions should be just another Tuesday for anyone ordering food for a group. But I’d also never expect the group to cater an entire meal around my preferences or restrictions. Grown ass man is successful hunter gatherer.
Now all bets might end up off the table if that respect doesn’t extend both ways though, because again, every grown ass man (everyone regardless of gender and older than 18-21 gets to be a “grown ass man”, with bonus “grown ass man” points if over 80 and a grandmother (Betty White being the ultimate grown ass man and I’ll die on that hill)) gets to make their own decisions and life choices. Now this doesn’t apply if you got local recommendations for ethically raised and delicious food that you’re just passing along because better ingredients make better food. _itarian choices are like religion: follow what you believe, don’t mock and detract others, there is a time and place for mutual debate based on mutual interest, and if you act like a Jehovah’s Witness that showed up at the door then expect to get treated like one.
Seems like the next option is to arrange for mass arrests in a very public direct action. Massively overflow the jail in that judge’s district with animal rights activists until they’re forced to dismiss the cases.
There’s no way this can backfire.
direct action with the goal of filling jails has a long and very successful history, going back AT LEAST to the IWW Free Speech Fights. It also saw widespread success during the fight for Civil Rights.
For profit prison companies:
Rubbing their hands together like an oldschool nintendo villain
Just sub the title for “Wealthy people or corporations are far less likely to be punished than someone whistleblowing that makes them look bad.”
Generically apply that our legal system.
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This is one thing I really don’t understand, how can you think someone should go to jail for beating a dog, but be happy to fund the slaughter of hundreds of animals over your life.
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Wait…
Do your dogs not eat meat?
Mine don’t.
Unlike cats who are obligate carnivores, dogs are “opportunistic carnivores”. They are able to digest plants, and a high quality vegetarian dog food is actually significantly healthier for them than the " grain-free" diets that have become so popular in the last few years and have been linked to increased heart disease.
After looking into it, I seems this is highly disputed by most of veterinary science, but I’ll admit it’s not well studied and maybe you’re right. But we do know meat is okay for dogs. We do not know if a meatless diet isn’t harmful. I can’t imagine why lean animal protein would be bad for an animal bread from wolves.
And yes, cats absolutely need meat.
I completely understand your reasoning for opposing the meat industry, but I saw one argument that I’m curious what ethical vegans would think about:
What if there is an animal product that has already been harvested, is it unethical to then utilize it? Like, stealing meat(which would actually hurt the meat industry), or being at an event where there are meat dishes that would otherwise go to waste. Those forms of consumption aren’t supporting the slaughter of the animals.
“Utilize” implies that animals are a resource for consumption instead of living things with their own right to live. As another comment pointed out we don’t “utilize” humans after they have been murdered. A goal of veganism is to stop factory farming but it is not what veganism is. If you consider all animals as having a right to life you then wouldn’t consider their bodies as resources after they were murdered but instead as victims.
As another comment pointed out we don’t “utilize” humans after they have been murdered.
Yes we do. Medical cadavers, organ donation, are the two most obvious ways.
If you consider all animals as having a right to life you then wouldn’t consider their bodies as resources after they were murdered but instead as victims.
I care about my own life, but not my lifeless body once I did.
Medical cadavers and organ donors are, first of all, volunteers not raised for that purpose, and second of all, we do not view them as commodities. There are rituals of respect when working with medical cadavers. I have heard of the families of organ donors visiting the recipients in emotional meetings.
first of all, volunteers not raised for that purpose
Of course, but in the situation I gave. You aren’t the one doing that.
Yeah if you guys wanna “utilize” my corpse have at it. Being useful after death seems like a win to me.
If you consider all animals as having a right to life you then wouldn’t consider their bodies as resources after they were murdered but instead as victims.
This is a nonsensical statement that contradicts itself. If all animals have a right to life, then you wouldn’t see any issue with a lion murdering a gazelle and then feasting on the victim’s body. Alternatively, if you condemn carnivorous animals as murderers, you don’t consider carnivores to have a right to life.
Even if we consider this only applies to humans – what about our pets? Cats are obligate carnivores. How can we feed our pet cats without being complicit in murder and feeding our cats the bodies?
Lions have to eat meat to survive, humans don’t. Humans are also moral agents, animals are not.
Should we neuter lions then?
I’m pretty sure there are vegan pet foods with similar nutritional profiles
Not for cats. There’s a market for vegan cat food, but vets say it doesn’t give them the full nutrition they need.
On top of that, I’m always skeptical of vegan foods that are able to meet more comprehensive nutritional profiles. Not their safety or anything, but if they’re truly vegan. We can’t just synthesize nutrients from chemicals, not en masse. Maybe in a few decades, but for now, those nutrients require incredibly expensive equipment to make from scratch.
Most of the time, the nutrient is extracted, purified, and concentrated from its usual source. Nutrients only found from meat would then need to be extracted from meat, which technically wouldn’t be vegan. I think there’s some nutrients that we’re able to engineer bacteria to produce, which is certainly better from a vegan perspective. Although it begs the question of what vegan ethics around bioengineering bacteria are.
living things with their own right to live
do all living things have a right to live?
Why would they not?
all is the keyword in that sentence.
There are social and intrapersonal reasons to avoid eating meat even if doing so doesn’t lead directly to more animals being slaughtered. It is still treating the dead bodies of animals as a commodity, something we don’t do to the bodies of dead humans. And it will take a cultural shift in how we see animals in order to end their oppression.
And the issue of eating “wasted” (weird way to talk about it as a vegan) meat is more concrete when you are eating meat at a function or the leftovers of a friend. The next function is going to have just as much meat if not more because it all got eaten. Your friend isn’t going to think about reducing their meat consumption because they were left with too much, they might even get more satisfaction from you eating it because of pity. People who regularly consume animal products often think going without them must be suffering.
I don’t agree with freegans, though I also don’t really care what they do. As long as they understand there is a clear distinction between something like dumpster diving and a potluck.
By definition, Vegans would not. People who would typically define themselves as “Freegan”.
Seeing other’s flesh as food is the problem…
Why? They’re dead
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they’re not food…
So, I’ve seen this argument before. That humans should never eat meat because we have other options, but it’s ok for animals. Given the opportunity, herbivores will eat meat on occasion. In your opinion, does that mean that humans are morally superior to every other thing on the face of the planet?
Yes, we have moral agency, others do not.
Yeah their argument breaks down very quickly. If humans are uniquely responsible for consuming meat but carnivorous animals aren’t, then there’s something special about humans which differentiates us from the carnivorous animals. And if we acknowledge that, that brings up a whole new host of questions. Is it wrong then for an enlightened species like us to give meat to our obligate carnivore pets?
You’re disconnecting from what is to be a human being, I feel sorry for you and hope that some day you can get back in sync with nature.
Agreed, nothing is more natural and human than the squeak of shopping cart wheels and the touch of cool air from the refrigerated section as you hunt for the best prices on plastic wrapped slabs of meat.
Because cruelty is the point when beating a dog, whereas it’s a byproduct in meat production
What about dog fighting rings where the motive is profit? Or workplaces that expose workers to carcinogens for profit?
dog fights are inherently cruel and produce no product other than those wishing to view cruelty
What about raising dogs for meat?
Make me
No.
Oh hell to the no
Stop. Trying. To. Force. Your. Religion. Down. Other. Peoples. Throats.
Stop caring about climate change? Nope, I’ll still protest animal agriculture practices
Oh bullshit.
You just care about the smug sense of superiority you give yourself by huffing your own farts.
No.
work in a non food producing field that uses the same stringent requirements as food to table is suppose to have
one thing constantly cropping up in workroom discussions is the fact people will grab a competitors product with cheaper inferior questionable ingredients that comes from places not paying employees a proper wage unclean conditions the whole nine yards every time and price is not always the final deciding factor
this will take more than people standing up for animal rights (thanks and shout out to the ones on the front line) might be a whole change of culture that is needed before this issue could be addressed
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Hsiung is now being held in jail at least until his sentencing hearing on November 30 (like many other people detained in Sonoma County, he’s only allowed to leave his cell for 30 minutes per day, DxE communications director Cassie King told me).
“A big feature of these trials has been the opportunity to expose the lawlessness of the industry and juxtapose that with the trivial infractions by people who are rescuing animals … When you aren’t able to make that contrast for the jury, it’s a lot harder to win.”
Theft charges have opened the door for activists to show evidence of the health and physical condition of the animals they took, to try to persuade jurors that they were so sick that they wouldn’t have made it to slaughter, making them worthless to their owners — a defense that proved successful in DxE’s recent trials in Utah and Merced, California.
The DA office’s involvement in the Farm Bureau event “was to provide the attendees with information about criminal law as it pertained to trespassing,” Sonoma County Assistant District Attorney Brian Staebell told Vox in an email.
One of DxE’s major goals in its trials has been to win the right to present a “necessity defense,” in which a defendant argues that they had no option but to commit a crime to prevent a greater evil from occurring, like breaking into a hot car to save a baby or dog inside.
For example, Passaglia placed a gag order on Hsiung, barring him from talking to media during the trial, which was condemned as unconstitutional by UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and by the ACLU of Northern California.
The original article contains 3,561 words, the summary contains 279 words. Saved 92%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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They are stealing sick animals of no commercial value in order to render medical aid. In cases where they have actually gone to trial for theft, they have won, because they show jurors footage of the awful condition these stolen animals were in.
Which was why the prosecutors dropped the theft charges, put a gag order on the footage, and instead threw a “felony conspiracy to commit trespassing” charge at the leader of the group, who didn’t even participate directly in stealing the animals.
Well, due to ag gag laws, you’re committing a crime by exposing animal cruelty. So.
Oopsie woopsie, guess we don’t like knowing that, huh
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Sorry, you misunderstood what I meant by “you’re.” I could have said “one is” to better avoid miscommunication. Anyway, look up some info on ag gag laws and then think about your original comment within the context of your new understanding of what is a crime in the USA.
So freeing livestock is a crime in your eyes?
My eyes don’t define crime. That’s not how it works. The law defines it. And the court looks at the law. I’m not a child so I understand this.
Do you consider Harriet Tubman a criminal too?
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So why do we need to differentiate between “arrested for exposing abuse” and “arrested for breaking unjust laws in the process of exposing abuse”?
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Ethically no, legally yes?
That’s sort of just how laws work. Legal doesn’t mean good.
Exactly. Some people think that if you have an altruistic goal, you’re exempt from the rules everyone else has to follow.
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They’re not punished for the speech, they’re punished for breaking the law.
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As soon as you suggest people stop eating meat, suddenly they have no moral standing or their change won’t make a difference. It’s just sad. People will hide behind ‘personal choice’ as if it absolves them of supporting the industry and any wrong doing that comes as a consequence of it. You can’t justify breeding an animal into existence for the sole purpose of killing and eating it when it is entirely unnecessary to do so. It’s probably the biggest example of injustice in the modern world, next to slavery.
The guy led a group that stole farm animals and Vox calls it a ‘rescue’. I wonder why he went to prison
It is a rescue
The law says stealing livestock isn’t. So he was prosecuted for breaking those laws, not “exposing animal cruelty.”
Change “Farm animals” for “slaves” and you have your answer.
You don’t steal individuals who are held against their will. You free them.
Crazy that this is getting downvoted. We are still so far off from even basic general empathy towards non-human animals it’s making me cry…
Slaves are humans by definition. Every definition beings with
“A person who…”
Knowledge of definitions has nothing to do with empathy. It’s hard to take people seriously when they insist we don’t know the meanings of words.
The best definition I’ve seen of a “person” is “A being worthy of moral consideration.” (a commonly used concept in moral philosophy). So yeah, that definition can be applied to a cow, unless you believe that no amount of suffering imposed on a cow for any or no reason could ever constitute an immoral act.
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