::wikiveg:: an animal free wiki

I went down to Trenton Wednesday night to observe the SHAC 7 trial, as I said I might. We saw the defense lawyers’ entire case Thursday, and Friday was reserved for some finagling between the lawyers about the documents that will be given to the jury later. Closing statements are happening Monday, and jury deliberations shortly after.

It ain’t over till it’s over, but I’m afraid it may not go well for them. I talked to Josh Harper (one of the defendants) after the defense ended, and he indicated they weren’t very optimistic. He called it “mind-numbing” that he very well may be going to jail over some emails and speeches, and even more mind-numbing that there are laws on the books making that possible.

I think the big problem was that the defense lawyers weren’t doing so hot. (“Sleeping on the job” is how one defendant described it.) Most of them seemed competent, but it just seems not quite right, not quite right at all, for the prosecution to take ten days making its case, and the defense lawyers to be finished all in one day. I mean, they originally thought the case would last 12-18 weeks; then six weeks; this is just three and a half!

I’m guessing the problem is that all but one of the attorneys are court-assigned and don’t have a lot of time to devote to the case, or deep interest in it. The money people have raised for the legal fund has, I believe, gone to the remaining attorney, whose name I forget. Perhaps we just didn’t raise enough to get him to really invest himself in the case?

Another big problem was that the judge, Anne Thompson, was gagging everyone from talking about what can happen to animals inside HLS. People would start to refer to “the video of the workers punching—”, for example, and get cut off by her or prosecutor Charles McKenna. I think her official reason was that it’s just “hearsay”; the footage, for example, “could be from anywhere”. I think there must be more to it than that though: one witness, Janine Motta of the New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance, started to say, “There’s this one test that they do, where they—” before she was cut off by the judge. But she wasn’t talking about HLS, or even implying that the procedure happens or could happen at HLS; she was just answering a question about what information made her become an animal rights activist. I don’t think it’s uncharitable to suggest that the judge probably just didn’t want to allow anything graphic enough to make people ashamed of how our society treats animals.

If they get some prison time, and only Darius is expecting not to I believe, Josh said an appeals process might exonerate some of them, especially Jake Conroy and Lauren Gazzola; hopefully we can raise enough funds to make that happen. But in the meantime they’d be in custody for at least a year or so. And I heard the max figure for one of the defendants is 23 years; hopefully that’s wrong and the news article that said 13 years is right.

A tiny silver lining: the mainstream news articles, I think, making them look good and HLS and the government bad for a change.

(Note: I wrote this Friday but it didn’t post for some reason. There’s also been an official update since then; they still want people to come to court Monday and Tuesday.)