trial for PETA employees charged with animal cruelty

[wabi]

From USSA news:
Two employees for an animal rights organization that opposes all animal use are now on trial for allegedly killing and dumping adoptable dogs and cats.
The trial for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) employees Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook, who are each charged with 21 felony counts of animal cruelty, began Jan. 23. The two are accused of tossing garbage bags full of euthanized cats and dogs into a dumpster in Ahoskie, North Carolina on June 15, 2005.
The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) has issued reports from the trial this week. The reports detail how Ms. Tonya Northcott, an employee at the Ahoskie Animal Hospital, on June 15 sent a mother cat and her two kittens with the defendants who claimed that they would have no problem finding homes for the cats. Northcott explained that the cats had been socialized, played with, and had their shots.
Those cats ended up in a trash dumpster less than an hour later.
The CCF also reported that Bertie County Animal Control Officer Barry Anderson turned animals over to Hinkle and Cook on June 15. He described several healthy, adoptable dogs that he sent with the defendants with the understanding that they would find homes for the animals. These animals were among those found dead.
Defense lawyers tried to get Anderson to concede that he knew the animals would be euthanized after being picked up. Anderson admitted that he had seen PETA employees injecting animals, but he was told that the animals were being sedated for the ride back to Virginia.
PETA claims to be uncompromising in its stance against animal cruelty, but the organization has in fact killed more than 14,400 dogs and cats and pets since 1998.

[rutman]

Less Cats!, That is the only thing the organization has done that I agree with. Kill a cat, save wildlife!.

[Tar Heel]

Less Cats!, That is the only thing the organization has done that I agree with. Kill a cat, save wildlife!.

Wouldn't touch this one with a 35 foot pole.


Tar Heel

[Rage_A_Holic]

Wouldn't touch this one with a 35 foot pole.
Tar Heel

39 and a half foot pole.

[ComfyBear]

That just hypocritically PETAful

[jay73]

It's about time that one went to trial. I remember hearing about it a while back. I ain't a cat lover by any means but those words would be too strong for some Rutman.

I hope this isn't a case where any publicity is good publicity. I would love to see those "people" to get black-balled.


Jay

[ComfyBear]

I hope this isn't a case where any publicity is good publicity. I would love to see those "people" to get black-balled.

A case of blue ones would even be better. The only problem is that they're mamby-pamby tree-huggers and don't have any.

[BigBird-VA]

Not fond of cats? No problem peta took out the dogs too. An equal opportunity killer. I live 10 minutes from their HQ and pass by there once a week or so. They have a big office building on the water downtown. Zero outside space for kennels or runs for animals. They do have a large walk-in freezer. Like my vet said animals dropped off there are dead before the owners leave the lot. Now we have real proof for those that didn't believe they did this type of thing. Hope they fry 'em for it.

[Woody Williams]

PETA in Court , Day 4

January 25, 2007 | Day Four is in the books, and the complexion of the PETA-Kills-Animals trial has changed completely. While yesterday's testimony focused on the nuts and bolts of what happened prior to the arrest of two PETA employees in June 2005, today's was far more emotionally taxing.

Did you know that some of the dogs allegedly killed by Adria Hinkle had names? We didn't either. But Bertie County (NC) Animal Control Officer Barry Anderson testified today that two Dalmatians named Toby and Annie -- dogs he described as "just healthy, playful, and well-fed" -- were among the animals he naively turned over to Hinkle and her PETA coworker Andrew Cook on June 15, 2005:

"They came to the shelter to take all the dogs that were not being quarantined or on hold for any reason and take them back to Virginia … My understanding was that if it's an animal that's good or adoptable, you try to find homes for them … especially the two Dalmatians that were running around. And I asked her [Hinkle] if she thinks that those two dogs were adoptable. And she said yes, you know, she thought that they shouldn't have a problem at all finding homes for those Dalmatians."

Toby and Annie were the subject of some serious legal wrangling this morning, as Hinkle's lawyer tried to bar Anderson from describing that conversation. Defense attorneys claimed that Anderson's recollection of the conversation was not included in the "discovery" materials provided to them by the prosecution. But the D.A. searched her notebooks and satisfied Judge Cy Grant's curiosity, so Anderson was allowed to share the chilling story with the jury.

Ahoskie, NC newspaper editor Cal Bryant reported this morning (in the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald) that unnamed "PETA officials attending the trial" now acknowledge Hinkle killed animals from Anderson's shelter -- including those two Dalmatians -- while the PETA van was still in the parking lot. Presumably, this was just minutes after Hinkle assured Anderson that the dogs were adoptable. Jurors may never hear this disturbing detail, but coffee shops in Ahoskie are buzzing about it.

Anderson was optimistic that PETA would give these animals (and all the others that eventually turned up dead) a good-faith effort at adoption. He even handed over his own dog to Hinkle -- a spirited terrier that he and his wife had trouble housebreaking:

"I knew that the dog was a very good dog, but we weren't that successful with it. You know, we were gone most of the time, the kids were at school and so forth, and I knew that by talking to Ms. Hinkle that she could possibly find a home for it, someone that was looking for a good dog … To my understanding, she found a home for it in Virginia."

His dog's name was Happy. Not even PETA could make this stuff up.

Another episode that made some jurors visibly uncomfortable concerned incriminating documents recovered from the PETA van Adria Hinkle was driving when she and Andrew Cook were arrested. At PETA, it seems, the animal-killing isn't complete until the paperwork is done. Hinkle and Cook, it emerged today, kept a "Fieldwork Data Log" describing all the animals they collected and dispatched to The Big Doghouse in the Sky.

Each line on the log has a space to record an animal's breed, sex, age, and condition. Here are just a few of the actual examples read into evidence, as Hinkle and Cook described them:

Breed: Beagle

Sex: Female

Age: 6 months

Condition: Adorable

Breed: Schnauzer

Sex: Male

Age: Born

Condition: Perfect

Breed: BSH [British Shorthair cat]

Sex: Female

Age: 7 years

Condition: Pregnant

Question: If these defendants weren't PETA employees, who do you think would be outside the courthouse protesting? Yep. PETA employees.

On cross-examination, defense attorneys tried to get Anderson to concede that he knew his shelter's animals would all be euthanized after PETA picked them up. After 15 minutes of badgering, the animal control officer finally answered "yes" when he was asked if he ever "saw PETA employees injecting animals."

But this was quickly put into context by prosecutor Valerie Asbell during her "re-direct" questions:

Asbell: When you'd see PETA employees inject an animal, what were you told they were doing?

Anderson: Sedating the animals for the ride.

Asbell: And did you ask them, when you saw them inject an animal, what they were doing?

Anderson: Yes.

Asbell: And what did they tell you?

Anderson: That's what they were doing.

Asbell: Which was what?

Anderson: Sedating the animals for the ride, to take back to Virginia.

Asbell: Did anyone, including Ms. Hinkle, ever tell you that they were killing the animals by injecting them at the shelter?

Anderson: No.

After a short mid-afternoon recess, lawyers gathered in front of the bench for what looked to be a very contentious conference. We would soon find out why. The prosecutor's next witness was Brian H. Reise, a supervisor with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Greensboro.

Reise produced a DEA Certificate of Non-Registration (in his words) "certifying that there is no registration in North Carolina for PETA to handle, in any capacity, controlled substances" -- meaning that PETA may not legally "administer, nor handle, procure, manufacture, or distribute controlled substances as a practitioner, retail pharmacy, animal shelter, distributor, researcher, medical lab, importer, exporter, and/or manufacturer in North Carolina."

Oops.

Just to be absolutely clear, the D.A. asked Reise about the specific drug found in PETA's infamous tackle-box "death kit," and found in the organs of the animals recovered from the scene of the crime:

Asbell: If they don't have a federal registration in the state of North Carolina, nobody from PETA in Norfolk, Virginia can dispense or administer drugs in North Carolina. Is that correct?

Reise: Not controlled substances.

Asbell: And sodium pentobarbital is a controlled substance?

Reise: Sodium pentobarbital is a controlled substance.

We leave you tonight with the words of Detective Jeremy Roberts, who concluded his testimony this morning. Asked by a defense lawyer why he charged Hinkle and Cook with animal cruelty for merely "putting animals to sleep," Roberts replied:

"I believed that it was cruel when they refused to find these animals homes, or at least try to. And without even trying, trying to find them homes, your clients killed these animals. I believe that's cruel."

And asked if he had ever charged a defendant with Animal Cruelty before, or if he's charged anyone since the PETA arrests, Roberts answered: "No sir. We've never had a case like this."

http://www.petakillsanimals.com/Trial_Day4.cfm

[Woody Williams]

PETA Trial Day 5:

Deception and Tears


January 26, 2007 | Shortly after 4:00 on Day 5, District Attorney Valerie Asbell told the team of defense lawyers arrayed against her that just four more prosecution witnesses will testify against People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) employees Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook.

At this point, two things are certain: The defense will begin its case Monday afternoon. And Reesie Ray is one cool lady. More about her later.


(Fair warning: It was a busy day in court, so this is a long update. Bear with us. It's worth it.)


Book 'em, Danno


Five law enforcement officers testified today about their roles in the investigation and arrest of Hinkle and Cook. First was Bertie County Sergeant Ed Pittman, who recounted how Animal Control Officer Barry Anderson described the relationship between his animal shelter and PETA:


"He [Anderson] informed me that the PETA employees would come into our county on either Wednesdays or Thursdays, and pick up animals and carry them back to their place of business in Norfolk ... And the ones that were able to be adopted would be put up for adoption. I then asked him: Did the same employees come each week? And he said that no, different employees came on different weeks."


Defense attorneys have appeared reluctant to argue that PETA employees other than Adria Hinkle regularly did exactly what got her arrested. On the one hand, they don't want to promote the idea that she made a weekly habit of personally dispatching a few dozen Lassies to doggie heaven. On the other hand, they want to help PETA contain the institutional damage from this self-inflicted black eye.


But regardless of how defense attorneys Jack Warmack, Blair Brown, and Lisa Stevenson spin this when it's their turn to put on a case, it's only natural to wonder: Just how many PETA employees are involved in the group's animal-killing program? In 2005, PETA reported to the State of Virginia that it killed 1,946 pets. That's more than three dozen per week. And as Raleigh's News & Observer reported for the first time on Monday, PETA's property in Norfolk includes an animal crematorium.


Bertie County Detective Tommy Northcott testified about his role in the surveillance of PETA's van. Warmack engaged in some theatrical hair-splitting over whether or not Northcott saw Hinkle or Cook enter the Ahoskie Animal Hospital with a cat carrier. But jurors are more likely to remember Northcott's description of "some loud 'thud' noises" that he heard as the defendants tossed dead animals into a trash dumpster.


Defense lawyers also seem to be looking for ways to hint that the police investigation was part of a two-county conspiracy against PETA. Kooky? Yes. Paranoid? Definitely. But it's their job to sow seeds of doubt among the jurors, so you can hardly blame them for grasping at any available straws. Northcott delivered a body blow to this theory, though, when he testified that he had no idea the van Hinkle was driving belonged to PETA until he "ran the license plates"— after Hinkle and Cook had already picked up a cat and two kittens in Ahoskie.


Long-time police veterans sometimes deliver courtroom testimony with a deadpan so dry that it approaches comedy. Bertie County Detective Frank Timberlake first stopped PETA's van after Hinkle and Cook made their June 15, 2005 dumpster pilgrimage. Here's how he related his conversation with Hinkle:


"She asked me why I had stopped the van, and I explained to her that detectives—Ahoskie detectives—believed that they'd just dumped dead dogs in the dumpster behind the Piggly Wiggly, located there at the Ahoskie Newmarket Shopping Center. Miss Hinkle replied to me that she didn't know that there was anything wrong with that."

In his cross-examination, Warmack asked Timberlake if he remembers one of the arresting officers yelling "We got PETA! We got PETA! Somebody call the news!" (Yep. There's that nutty conspiracy routine again…) Not surprisingly, Timberlake said he didn't remember anything like that.


It emerged that one member of the press did show up— Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald editor Cal Bryant. Warmack pressed Timberlake on the time-line, insisting that "within 15 to 20 minutes of the van being stopped, the media was on the scene, correct?" Again, Timberlake didn't bite. Outside the courtroom, Mr. Bryant told the locals that he actually didn't arrive until at least two hours after the arrests. And there were no TV cameras until the following day.


Adding to Timberlake's recollection of Hinkle's comments at the scene of her arrest, Ahoskie Police Sergeant Ty Metzler testified that she told officers "You can't search my vehicle"—before being assured that yes, in fact, they could. (All those dead dogs, you know.) Speaking to D.A. Asbell, Metzler also recalled a brief conversation initiated by Hinkle, which comes off as downright creepy when you consider that she had killed 31 animals that day:


Metzler: "She did say something to me. I don't know why she said it. She asked me if I had any animals. And I said yes, I had a dog. And she said 'Where do you keep him?' And I said I keep the dog in my house. And she said 'Well, that's good.'"

Asbell: "And that's all she said?"

Metzler: [nodding] "Mm-Hmm."


Lab-Coated Experts

We heard from two scientific witnesses on Friday. One was Jennifer Holzhauser, a chemist with North Carolina 's State Bureau of Investigation. She testified that the drug vials seized from PETA's tackle-box "death kit" contained ketamine (a sedative) and sodium pentobarbital (a controlled-substance barbiturate for which, a Drug Enforcement Agency investigator testified yesterday, PETA had no North Carolina license).

A more controversial expert was veterinary pathologist Steven Rushton, from the North Carolina Dept of Agriculture's Rollins Lab. Rushton received one of the dead dogs for analysis after the others were buried. The dog, we learned yesterday, was chosen arbitrarily—it was the only one wearing a collar.


Rushton testified that until tissue samples tested positive for sodium pentobarbital, he was unable to conclusively determine the animal's cause of death:


Asbell: "Would it be your opinion that the dog was healthy?


Rushton: "The dog looked pretty good"


Lawyers spent a half-hour tussling with Rushton over a remote possibility that the dog could have been infected with the Parvo virus, a nasty intestinal contagion that has been known to spread among animal-shelter dogs.


Defense attorney Lisa Stevenson, eager to imply that the Bertie County animal shelter's dirt floors made it a giant Parvo epidemic-in-waiting, pressed Rushton on the odds that the dog he examined wasn't as healthy as it looked. Since symptoms of Parvo can take 7 to 10 days to appear, she argued, wasn't it possible that the dog was infected?


Rushton testified that, short of testing the dog's feces (which he had no reason to do), the best way to identify Parvo would be to visually inspect the intestines as part of what he called "a gross examination" of the body.


On re-direct, D.A. Asbell cleared the air:


Asbell: "Ms. Stevenson asked you a question about diagnosing the Parvo virus, and I believe your answer was that the best way to diagnose it was from a gross examination, which is what you did?"

Rushton: "Yes."

Asbell: "All right. And this particular dog, that dog that you did an examination of, did not have the Parvo virus?"

Rushton: "No."

Case closed. In addition, a veterinarian we know well advises us that Parvo is a disease generally found in puppies , not full-grown dogs. (It has an unusual fondness for attacking a puppy's developing intestines.) Nobody, including Rushton and the officers involved with selecting and transporting this dog, has referred to it as a puppy.


Teresa and Susan

Regardless of the outcome of this trial, we're promising a PetaKillsAnimals.com t-shirt to Ahoskie Animal Hospital receptionist Teresa "Reesie" Ray. (Click here to reserve your own. We have bumper stickers too.)

Reesie is our hero.

A grandmotherly 21-year veteran of the hospital (think Angela Lansbury with a southern accent), she began by fleshing out the relationship between PETA and her employer. While PETA paid for the hospital's Dr. Patrick Proctor to spay and neuter local strays (a good thing), the group had been picking up animals from the hospital for several years (as we now know, not such a good thing):

Asbell: "Ms. Ray, prior to that day [June 15, 2005], had you ever contacted the PETA organization before, to come and get animals from the Ahoskie Animal Hospital?"

Ray: "Yes, I had."

Asbell: "And who actually initiated contact between the Ahoskie Animal Hospital and the PETA organization?"

Ray: "I don't really remember how. It's been going on for, since, well, several years before … We would call, and they would come pick up animals that people couldn't keep, and take them back—we thought—for adoption."

Note that Ray isn't talking about sick, diseased, hopeless animals. This was an animal hospital. Sick animals were treated. Healthy ones that couldn't find homes in this tiny community needed other options. Ray, along with her co-workers, operated under the impression that PETA would treat these healthy animals "ethically." Go figure.

Asbell: "Had anything ever been represented to you by anybody at PETA or this defendant before, that they didn't find homes for animals?"

Ray: "No."

Asbell: "So you were specifically calling the organization to help pick up animals and find homes for them?"

Ray: "Yes."

Asbell: "Was that always your understanding?"

Ray: "Yes."

Asbell: "Each time anybody from PETA came down to pick up animals?"

Ray: "Yes."

Next, she described Adria Hinkle's reaction on June 15, 2005, when a veterinary technician named Tonya gave her a cat and two kittens to take back to Norfolk:

Ray: "Adria took them, and she held the carrier up like this, and she said 'Oh, we shouldn't have any trouble finding homes for them.'"

Asbell: "After she said that, or before she said that, what did you think Ms. Hinkle was going to do when she carried the cat and the two kittens out?"

Ray: "I thought she was going to take them and try to find homes for them."

Asbell: "And—had you thought she was going to do anything otherwise, would you have handed those kittens over to her?"

Ray: "No. I wouldn't have called them [PETA] in the beginning."

Despite aggressive cross-examination by defense lawyer Blair Brown, Ray didn't flinch:

Brown: "You knew that there was no guarantee that PETA was going to find homes for these cats."

Ray: "If I had known they were not going to even try, I would never have called them."

Brown: "There was no guarantee that they were going to find homes for those cats."

Ray: "No there was no guarantee, but I thought they would at least have given them a chance."

One of Reesie's co-workers, a veterinary technician named Susan Dunlow, testified about the moment when Tonya first showed Adria Hinkle the cat and two kittens:

"Tonya held up the carrier to, like, face level. And Adria was looking into the carrier, saying 'Oh! They're so cute!' At that point, Tonya was telling her that we've had them for several weeks, they were very socialized, they were very healthy, and that we hoped they would be able to find homes for them. At that point, Adria said 'We shouldn't have any problems finding homes for these kittens. They're absolutely gorgeous! Do they have names?'"

Later, when Asbell showed her an evidence photo of the dead felines found in the PETA-owned van Hinkle was driving, Dunlow shed the trial's first tears. A bailiff was nearby with tissues, and Dunlow regained her composure, but some jurors appeared moved right along with her.

Under Brown's cross-examination, Dunlow testified she believed that PETA would be able to find homes for the two kittens because Norfolk had more potential pet owners than Ahoskie. Setting aside PETA's 90-percent kill rate during 2005, it sounds like a sensible conclusion.

"I was hoping," Dunlow said, "that in a place as big as the Norfolk, Virginia area they would have a highly more successful rate of adoption than we would."

Brown later asked her if anyone from PETA ever represented the organization as a pet-adoption service:

Dunlow: "Yes, [PETA] employees in the past had told me specifically that they placed these animals in homes."

Brown: "Guaranteed?"

Dunlow: "Well, they were hopeful. Just like I was hopeful. They didn't say that they'd transport the animals and kill them before they crossed the state line."

[JR]

Thanks for the updates woody. I never liked PETA. Sick SOB's.

-Jason

[LV2HNT]

Thanks for the reports guys. I have been very interested in what has been going on. I hope PETA gets everything they deserve including the loss of a lot of members. Unfortunately I have only kept up with the case by the reports you guys have posted because the news channels here in D.C. have been choosing to cover other stories untill today... FOX news did mention it this morning. They briefly said that the judge has reduced the charges from felonies to misdemeanors for the PETA employees on trial for dumping euthanized animals in North Carolina. That was it. They didn't say anything about what realy happened. I guess PETA has the local news and a lot of the politicans in their pockets now. I don't know who to blame more for the decline of our society. The politicians that make the laws or the media that brain washes the masses to elect the polititians and join groups like PETA. I am thinking the media because the citizens here are too busy trying to live to get to the bottom of every issue and research every candidate so they trust the media to do it for them. Poor, missguided, brainless fools. News is supposed to be non biased right? I bet that if some sick redneck thought he was helping the poor animals by picking them up from a shelter, taking them home and putting a bullet through their head was caught. It would make national news and portrayed as a need to fight animal cruelty (by joining PETA) and maybe even gun rights. But when it happens to PETA employees I hear nothing about it, and worst of all I have heard nothing about the probability that PETA is telling their employees to do this and they are probably doing it in a whole bunch of states to countless animals. PETA is probably the real villan here not the two people that got caught doing their job but the media is only recognizing the two employees.

[foreman]

i happen to own one of each and if anyone even raised their voice to them would deal with me. i love my pets like children and noone will hurt them either. i hope who killed those animals for no reason will suffer the same. the animals like children didnt ask to be brought into this world. just my oponian.

[Digger]

Just love those PETA workers.

[GaryL]