PETA kills animals Trial /Prosecution last witness

paparock · January 24, 2007

http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/535593.html

Animal-rights group employees charged in dumping of dead dogs, cats

Kristin Collins, Staff Writer

WINTON - All around this struggling farm town, chicken houses stand in the fields as a testament to the way many here earn their living -- raising, slaughtering and processing chickens.

It is an unlikely locale for an unlikely criminal case. Today, two employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a radical animal-rights group that opposes meat-eating, are on trial for the strangest of charges: killing animals.

PETA is based in Norfolk, Va., but its work has international scope. The group, which raises more than $25 million a year from 1.6 million supporters, opposes any human use of animals, whether for food, fashion or research. In the more than two decades since its founding, it has become a major threat to medical researchers, meatpackers, fur sellers and others.

Now, two of its employees stand accused of tossing garbage bags full of euthanized cats and dogs into a Dumpster behind a Piggly Wiggly in Hertford County, 130 miles northeast of Raleigh.

Adria J. Hinkle and Andrew B. Cook, both of whom work in PETA's Norfolk office, are charged with 21 counts each of animal cruelty, a felony that can carry prison time, along with littering and obtaining property by false pretenses.

It is a strange turn of events for PETA. The group's supporters have often been prosecuted for their radical efforts to protect animals -- breaking into fashion shows to throw blood on fur-wearing models, liberating lab animals, showing gory videos outside the circus -- but PETA has never been accused of hurting animals.

Those who oppose PETA are seizing on the trial. The spectacle also has drawn a gaggle of lawyers, PETA staffers, reporters and curious onlookers to this rural county seat, where the small brick courthouse resembles an aging elementary school.

They sat through two days of jury selection -- longer than for many murder trials -- during which lawyers struggled to find jurors who weren't close friends or business associates of any of the more than 60 witnesses.

Several potential jurors were thrown out after saying they had read about the case, gossiped about it at work or formed strong opinions about PETA. Defense attorneys threw out a handful of farmers and avid hunters but left three people on the jury who work for a Perdue slaughterhouse a few miles from Winton.

Now, jurors will decide whether Hinkle and Cook were, as PETA argues, providing humane deaths to animals that would otherwise have been painfully killed in gas chambers -- or whether, as several local officials say, they were taking animals on the promise of finding them homes and secretly killing them.

A PETA spokeswoman, Kathy Guillermo, said PETA never wanted to get into the business of euthanizing animals. But she said the group couldn't ignore the horrible conditions in animal shelters around Norfolk and in northeastern North Carolina. The group now euthanizes thousands of animals a year.

"Euthanasia is a better alternative to sitting in a stinking pound," Guillermo said.

PETA opponents are drawing attention to this little-known facet of the group's work.

On Monday morning, the Washington D.C.-based Center for Consumer Freedom, an anti-PETA group funded by restaurants and meat producers, drove a mobile billboard truck reading "PETA: As Warm and Cuddly as You Thought?" past the courthouse.

David Martosko, research director for the group, described the case as a gift in his fight to discredit PETA. He plans to monitor the entire trial.

"Most people would not believe, if you told them two years ago, that PETA kills animals. They'd say, 'What? They're the bunny huggers,' " Martosko said.

Martosko and Stephanie Maltz, a lawyer with the Foundation for Bio-Medical Research, a Washington, D.C., group that lobbies for animal testing, paid a visit Monday night to the trash bin where the animals were dumped.

It was dark, and a man with a flashlight was rooting through the garbage, but Maltz was undeterred. She jumped out of the car and took a picture of the grime-stained container for her group's Web site.

roadwarrior · January 24, 2007

Excellent!

Nick B · January 24, 2007

Talk about a victory in the war on terrorism.

Down with PETA

Redlinerobert · January 24, 2007

I will smile today, knowing that those radicals SOB's are going through this.

SPEEDBEAD. · January 24, 2007

Thats awesome, I hope people finally see these radicals for what they really are.

squid · January 24, 2007

ABOUT TIME....PETA....PETA...PETA...LOL.....PEOPLE EAT THE ANIMALS.

NOT A LOVER OF THIS GROUP...CAUSE EYES EATS WHAT EYES KILLS..LOL

Troutfisher · January 24, 2007

Talk about a victory in the war on terrorism.
Down with PETA

Agreed...they deserve the worst! Can't stand them. >

Grey Wolf · January 24, 2007

What's that old saying ?

" Do as I say not as I do."

paparock · January 25, 2007

Fur's flying outside N.C. courthouse as cruelty case comes to trial

The Center for Consumer Freedom, which opposes PETA and its practices, brought this billboard on a truck to the courthouse in Winton, N.C., where two PETA employees stand accused of animal cruelty.

WINTON, N.C. They were not the questions lawyers might usually ask when picking a jury for a felony case.

Do any of you have any pets? District Attorney Valerie Asbell asked 12 potential jurors Monday as the trial for two PETA workers accused of animal cruelty got under way .

To each pet owner, she asked whether the animals were indoor or outdoor pets, whether they were regularly taken to see a veterinarian and if any had ever adopted from a shelter.

Defense lawyers also asked potential jurors about their interests in hunting and fishing, magazine subscriptions and whether any had ever euthanized a pet.

In a trial to determine the guilt or innocence of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals workers Adria Hinkle of Norfolk and Andrew Cook of Virginia Beach, the answers potential jurors offered were important to the case, according to lawyers for the prosecution and defense.

The pair are being tried together this week in Hertford County Superior Court on 21 counts of felony animal cruelty, seven counts of littering and three counts of obtaining property by false pretenses.

Ahoskie Police say that on June 15, 2005, the two were arrested after officers observed them dump several bags of dead animals into a grocery store trash container. Police said they also found more dead animals in the pair's van and a digital camera with images of living and dead animals.

The trial has generated a lot of interest that drew a strange brew of spectators to the small town of Winton on Monday.

Local and national news media mingled with PETA staff, supporters and opponents, such as a legal analyst from the National Association for Biomedical Research and the director of research for the Center for Consumer Freedom.

The Center for Consumer Freedom, which opposes PETA and its practices, paid for a mobile billboard on a truck that pulled into the Hertford County Courthouse parking lot about 30 minutes before potential jurors were to report for duty. It also purchased a full-page advertisement in Monday's New York Times. Both promoted the group's Web site, which will offer updates posted from the trial by David Martosko, the coalition's director of research.

Martosko agreed to have the sign moved in time for the jury pool's lunch break Monday after he met with the judge. The billboard was scheduled to tour around Ahoskie on Monday afternoon, according to a news release from the group.

Jury selection will continue this morning at the Hertford County Courthouse. Superior Court Judge Cy Grant said trial proceedings should begin at 1:30 p.m.

PETA Trial, Day 3

1/25/07

"Adria and Andy were simply doing their jobs to euthanize the animals."

That's Blair Brown -- a lawyer for one of two PETA employees on trial for felony animal cruelty -- virtually summing up the defense's strategy during his opening statement yesterday. Brown and the rest of PETA's legal team don't deny that the two defendants -- Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook -- killed (at least) 31 dogs and kittens in June 2005. They don't deny that the two threw the dead bodies into a dumpster. And they don't deny that what Hinkle and Cook did is standard practice for a group that wants constitutional rights for pigs.

The flimsy justification for the pro-animal-rights/pro-animal-killing hypocrisy touted by PETA folks inside and outside the courtroom has been that euthanizing these animals is more humane than keeping them in overcrowded shelters. But that begs the question: If local shelter conditions really are that bad, and the preservation of animal life is PETA's singular purpose, why didn't they adopt the animals themselves? Maybe the home they'd provide is less than ideal -- but it's certainly better than being dead.

Then again, when you spend so much of your $25 million budget on tasteless billboards, props for naked protests, and disturbing comic books, there's probably not much cash left to care for real-live animals.

Other than the mind-blowing hypocrisy of PETA ordering its employees to kill pets, the real stunner so far is how Hinkle and Cook convinced people to hand over the animals in the first place. Today, the local district attorney read into the record this conversation between the Bertie County (NC) Animal Control Officer Barry Anderson and Adria Hinkle -- the person suspected of actually killing the animals:

Anderson: "Do you think you can find homes for these animals?"

Hinkle: "Yes. No problem. Absolutely."

PETA Trial Day 4:

Toby, Annie, and a Drug Bust in the Making

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 it 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 these two Dalmatians -- while the PETA van was still in the shelter's 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

paparock · January 26, 2007

PETA's Dirty Secret

Hypocrisy is the mother of all credibility problems, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has it in spades. While loudly complaining about the "unethical" treatment of animals by restaurant owners, grocers, farmers, scientists, anglers, and countless other Americans, the group has its own dirty little secret.

PETA kills animals. By the thousands.

From July 1998 through the end of 2005, PETA killed over 14,400 dogs, cats, and other "companion animals" -- at its Norfolk, Virginia headquarters. That's more than five defenseless animals every day. Not counting the dogs and cats PETA spayed and neutered, the group put to death over 90 percent of the animals it took in during 2005 alone. And its angel-of-death pattern shows no sign of changing.

Year Received Adopted Killed Transferred % Killed % Adopted

2005 2,145 146 1,946 69 90.7 6.8

2004 2,640 361 2,278 1 86.3 13.7

2003 2,224 312 1,911 1 85.9 14.0

2002 2,680 382 2,298 2 85.7 14.3

2001 2,685 703 1,944 14 72.4 26.2

2000 2,684 624 2,029 28 75.6 23.2

1999 1,805 386 1,328 91 73.6 21.4

* 1998 943 133 685 125 72.6 14.1

Total 17,806 3,047 14,419 331 80.1 17.1

* figures represent the second half of 1998 only

other than spay/neuter animals

» skeptical? click here to see the proof

On its 2002 federal income-tax return, PETA claimed a $9,370 write-off for a giant walk-in freezer, the kind most people use as a meat locker or for ice-cream storage. But animal-rights activists don't eat meat or dairy foods. So far, the group hasn't confirmed the obvious -- that it's using the appliance to store the bodies of its victims.

In 2000, when the Associated Press first noted PETA's Kervorkian-esque tendencies, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk complained that actually taking care of animals costs more than killing them. "We could become a no-kill shelter immediately," she admitted.

PETA kills animals. Because it has other financial priorities.

PETA raked in nearly $29 million last year in income, much of it raised from pet owners who think their donations actually help animals. Instead, the group spends huge sums on programs equating people who eat chicken with Nazis, scaring young children away from drinking milk, recruiting children into the radical animal-rights lifestyle, and intimidating businessmen and their families in their own neighborhoods. PETA has also spent tens of thousands of dollars defending arsonists and other violent extremists.

PETA claims it engages in outrageous media-seeking stunts "for the animals." But which animals? Carping about the value of future two-piece dinners while administering lethal injections to puppies and kittens isn't ethical. It's hypocritical -- with a death toll that PETA would protest if it weren't their own doing.

PETA kills animals. And its leaders dare lecture the rest of us.

http://www.petakillsanimals.com/

preach4bass · January 27, 2007

I live about half an hour from Ahoskie and Winton, so this stuff has been all over our local news. I love it! On top of that, we have a guy in the Church from Ahoski, and PETA came by his house (when he wasn't there), went in his dog pen, took his dog house out and replaced it with a new house with straw in it. I think he said they also left a bag of food. After PETA came by a few times and messed with his stuff (without permission), he called them up and talked to them in a way that his preacher probably didn't hear the "whole story."

paparock · January 30, 2007

PETA Trial, Day 6:

Turning the Corner

The prosecution called its final three witnesses today, and then rested its case. A defense motion to dismiss all charges was argued fiercely and then shot down by the judgefor now. And the defense's first witness was more prosecution-friendly than expected.