Home - Peta Kills Animals

Prosecutor Valerie Asbell raised another objection (the day was chock full of them) when defense lawyer Blair Brown got permission to show a video depicting dogs being put to sleep in a gas chamber. The grisly video, interestingly enough, was shot years ago at the Yadkin County shelter (in northwestern North Carolina). In 2002, the Center for Consumer Freedom donated $15,000 to help build a new shelter there, after PETA's similar offer was rebuffed. County managers, it seems, were uncomfortable working with PETA after they learned about the group's financial ties to violent terrorism.

Most of lawyer Blair Brown's questions for Nachminovitch concerned the conditions of the Bertie County shelter during the years 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003. The photos of animals were not pretty, and their descriptions unflattering. But Brown didn't explain what this had to do with the condition of the animals in that shelter on June 15, 2005 -- the day Hinkle and Cook picked up the pets that got them arrested.

Hinkle wasn't even hired at PETA until December 2003. She didn't begin taking field trips in PETA's vans until well into 2004. The dumping incidents that sparked the investigation in Hertford County didn't begin until May 2005. And no one has testified that the particular animals Hinkle and Cook allegedly picked up and killed on June 15, 2005 had anything wrong with them.

Hearsay, Your Honor

The biggest confrontation of the morning concerned the Hearsay rule -- which essentially says that if I tell you your breath stinks, you are not allowed to testify about it in court. (If it's terribly important, I have to show up in court and describe what I said personally). Of course, there are exceptions. And North Carolina has its own peculiar list of them.

PETA's lawyers have been trying to show -- without any credible evidence thus far -- that Bertie County Animal Control Officer not only knew PETA was killing his animals, but asked them to do it. Today, defense lawyers produced a report, supposedly written by one of Daphna Nachminovitch's fieldwork employees, that described Anderson asking for PETA's help injecting an animal with something.

Problem: It's hearsay. Big time. So Nachminovitch wasn't allowed to read it in open court. The defense couldn't (or wouldn't) say who wrote the report -- only that the person no longer works for PETA -- and North Carolina law requires that this person be "trustworthy." Since nobody could say who he or she was, the question of trustworthiness was an open one.

Besides -- who's to say what Anderson actually told this person, if anything? Anderson testified last week that PETA employees told him they were injecting his animals with a sedative, to transport them back to Virginia for adoption. If Anderson asked for PETA's help injecting an animal, might this be what he meant?

It's all academic, as the judge decided that this evidence would be too pivotal to bend the rules and let it in through the proverbial back door. And its authenticity would be a big question mark anyway. The final nail in this coffin came when District Attorney Asbell told Judge Cy Grant that the defense had never shared the report with her office in the first place during pre-trial "discovery." So after a brief recess, Grant decided that the jury won't hear about it.

I'll Take 'Frozen Puppies' for $9,370, Alex

Ten minutes after lunch, Nachminovitch read from a January 30, 2004 proposal she wrote, explaining to the Bertie County managers what would be required if they wanted PETA to take over the operation of their animal shelter (an offer they declined). This sentence in PETA's letter made our ears perk up:

"The County should be responsible for the disposal of animal bodies. A large, heavy-duty freezer -- a walk-in is preferable -- will be needed in order to store carcasses. PETA will split the cost of the freezer with the County"

We noted first how PETA, the group that regularly uses images of animal "carcasses" as rhetorical weapons in its protests, calmly refers to them as though they were frozen turkeys or sides of beef. (Imagine that!)

And then we remembered PETA's 2002 federal income tax return -- in particular, the group's declaration that it had installed a walk-in freezer worth $9,370 at its Norfolk headquarters.

Could it be? Does PETA have its own facility intended to "store carcasses"?

Yep.

Defense lawyer Blair Brown asked Nachminovitch to describe some of the procedures that PETA had in place for its animal-killing program. Here's one exchange:

Brown: "What was the procedure that PETA had set up for disposal of animals euthanized in North Carolina?"

Nachminovitch: "We had a contract with Pet Cremation Services of Tidewater."

Brown: "And what were the CAP [PETA's 'Community Animal Project'] workers supposed to do with the animal bodies?"

Nachminovitch: "Bring them back to the PETA office and put them in the freezer."

Pet Cremation Services of Tidewater? We'll get to that in a second. But ponder, just for a moment, the concept of a massive walk-in freezer at the PETA headquarters, filled over time with dead animals trucked in from North Carolina.

We've said it before and it bears repeating: If anyone else were amassing a freezer of pup-sicles so nonchalantly, PETA would be protesting it. And probably using the photos to raise gobs of money.

Now on to the pet cremation. Nachminovitch testified that PETA has shelled out a lot of its supporters' donations on this service:

"Pet Cremation Services of Tidewater is a costly service. And so far, we've paid them about $30,000 for cremation over the years."

Sounds like a huge amount, right? But let's check the math.

The fee schedule for Pet Cremation Services of Tidewater is posted on the company's website. And Nachminovitch is right: It is costly. The least expensive cremation service -- for any animal weighing up to 15 pounds -- costs $125.

Let's assume that PETA gets a special "bulk" rate of 50-percent off. Let's even round it down. At $60 per animal, PETA's $30,000 (spent "over the years") would only cover around 500 carcasses.

PETA has reported killing over 14,400 animals since 1998. What happened to the other 13,900 bodies?