Zoe Rosenberg’s defense team is expected to appeal her conviction. As part of the defense team’s expected appeal, they plan to ask the court to allow the “necessity defense”. The big question is whether Rosenberg’s conviction will galvanize DxE’s “Open Rescue” cause. As she stated after the verdict: “A lot of times, we see the most mobilization in movements during moments of loss, in moments when people have been arrested or sentenced to serve time in jail. As a movement, we will similarly come back stronger in this moment.”
On Wednesday afternoon, October 29, after about 3½ hours of deliberation, jurors convicted animal rights activist Zoe Rosenberg on all charges: felony conspiracy and three misdemeanors. The 23-year-old San Luis Obispo native faces up to five years in jail when she returns for sentencing on Dec. 3, though probation remains a possibility…
In his closing remarks, Deputy District Attorney Matt Hobson portrayed Rosenberg as an activist so committed to spreading her message that she took those four chickens from Petaluma Poultry on June 13, 2023 more for fame than for the chickens’ wellbeing… He also raised doubts about the timing of the open rescue, which coincided with DxE’s annual “Animal Liberation Conference”…
Wednesday’s decision represents a significant blow for Rosenberg’s controversial Berkeley-based group, Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, which has a stated mission of “total animal liberation.” By spurning a plea agreement in favor of a high-stakes trial, Rosenberg had hoped to make DxE’s most compelling case yet that the organization’s brazen tactics known as “open rescues” are justifiable. Instead, she now faces the prospect of years behind bars for her role in a June 2023 incursion at Perdue subsidiary Petaluma Poultry…
Even though DxE activists have landed not-guilty verdicts in “open rescue” trials held in other jurisdictions, they have now been found guilty in two such trials in Sonoma County, an agriculturally rich region known as “America’s Provence” where more than 130 DxE activists have been arrested since 2018. Two years ago, in the same Santa Rosa courthouse where Rosenberg learned her fate Wednesday, DxE co-founder Wayne Hsiung was sentenced to 90 days in jail and two years of probation for his role in two factory farm protests in Petaluma.
Complicating matters for the defense in both cases: DxE’s lawyers weren’t allowed to mount a “necessity defense,” which deems that a person’s actions were justified if they had exhausted every other option before breaking the law. This left defense attorneys appealing to jurors’ sentimentality. For the same reason a bystander is legally allowed to break a window to rescue a dog trapped in a hot car, they argued, their clients’ actions were justifiable…
“I’m disappointed,” Chris Carraway, one of Zoe Rosenberg’s attorneys, told the Chronicle. “But even if the verdict had been all ‘not guilty,’ I still would’ve been disappointed by the fact that no one is bothering to investigate Petaluma Poultry”…
Throughout his closing statement Tuesday, Carraway stressed that Rosenberg couldn’t be found guilty of felony conspiracy because she believed that what she was doing was legal. The jury, however, didn’t need long to side with the prosecution. The three-plus hours jurors spent deliberating on Wednesday represented a small fraction of the six days they needed after the Hsiung trial.
Rosenberg’s defense team is expected to appeal her conviction… As part of the defense team’s expected appeal, Rosenberg’s attorneys plan to ask the court to allow the necessity defense. “It would have helped tremendously because this was a necessary act,” Carraway said. “It would have allowed us to introduce all the evidence that Petaluma Poultry is not only abusing animals, but putting people’s health at risk”…
The big question now is whether Rosenberg’s conviction will galvanize — or hinder — DxE’s cause. “A lot of times, we see the most mobilization in movements during moments of loss, in moments when people have been arrested or sentenced to serve time in jail,” Rosenberg, who will have to wear a GPS ankle monitor until her sentencing, told the Chronicle after Wednesday’s verdict. “As a movement, we will similarly come back stronger in this moment”. CONNOR LETOURNEAU
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