Sadly, protecting our rights is not free. Many of us have ancestors and relatives who have died in defense of them. I may not speak of it much here beyond this little notice but tomorrow my son heads off to basic training for the US Army Reserves. His father served in the US Army and my father did so in the US Air Force. Those are but a few of the brave and I support them all. I can easily distinguish between our fighting women and men and the government who sends them off to fight in conflicts of which I may not approve. Their service gives us the right to speak our minds even when we disagree with the government. In fact, it makes it our obligation to do so especially when they are sent off to danger of which we may not approve. What else would any caring family member do but ask if a particular war or conflict is worth the blood or our children?
And while men and women fight to preserve our rights, we have obligations here at home to see to the protection of those rights. A quasi-civil war is going on right here in many areas of rights that are being trod upon and much of my blog has become devoted to preserving the rights to own animals, whether as pets, in zoos, on farms, or for food. There are now a multitude of activists who proclaim that animals have independent rights and would specify such high standards of care that the average person can no longer own a pet; nor afford any form of animal based food. They would remove animals from human use altogether if possible and this would affect far more of your life than you may realize, changing day to day products from crayons to adhesives to beauty products.
A couple of months ago, I started the Animal Owners Defense project and some funds were raised to support the appeal of the U.S. Global Exotics case in Arlington, TX. Those who donated have already been invited to join a new email group for updates. Any others who would like to join are welcome to do so at Animal Owners Defense Fund yahoo group and an update to the Animal Owner Defense website will be up shortly.
Defending against the government seizing of animals is most certainly not cheap. A defense and appeal can easily run upwards of $30,000, particularly so as the Texas legislature has specified that you may not appeal a civil (quasi-criminal) animal seizure beyond the County Court level. Imagine that. If your animals are worth $250,000 as were the animals in the USGE seizure, you can be divested of ownership by a piddly little county court! That's the money side, the business side. For most of us, it's is the possibility of being divested of ownership of beloved pets or even rescued animals for little or no reason by the piddly county courts and divested of your rights and ownerhip summarily within days, specifically denied the option of appealing to protect even our civil and procedural rights. I consider it an outrage that needs correcting both at the legislative level and within the judicial process.
Animal Owner Defense (AOD) is taking up a new cause; the appeal of the case involving the exotic and other animals in Marion County, TX. I began blogging about this case in early February with the first major entry titled Kicking the Widow Hoffman. I will be doing a more extensive review but here's my short version...
I often speak of the "pro forma" nature of these cases but, IMO, Marion County's prosecutor, William (Bill) Gleason, made little to no attempt to even follow the pro forma, the rules of form, for that case. This is the worst case I've seen! That may only be that this is the where one I've gotten to see all the documents. It may be that this is the common practice and, if so, I find that terrifying.
In brief and completely my opinion: Marion County did an unauthorized, unwarranted search of the property without consent which was totally illegal. They used the information from that invasion to prepare an affidavit that was defective to obtain a warrant. They got their warrant which was defective. They searched and seized and, in doing so, brought in numerous unauthorized persons (including media) who were allowed to wander all through the property, including Hoffmann and Lulling's residence, unsupervised and as they pleased. They seized animal food, equipment, and other property that was not authorized to be seized by the warrant. In addition, other property is missing and unaccounted for altogether. Hoffmann and Lulling were arrested and jailed. Their bond was set at an extraordinary level and the County refused to reduce it unless they gave up ownership to the large exotic cats. A criminal case was begun but the case file is a complete mess AND the criminal case miraculously resulted in a civil judgment. On appeal to the County Court, the name of the case was changed and the prosecutor and court just plain pretended it had always been a civil case.
You can now see all of the JP documents for yourself here. The County Court judgment is also there. Please note that the JP case is titled "State of Texas", the docket sheet shows it is clearly a criminal case, that they were arrested and jailed for a week, that Mr. Lulling is hearing impaired so was jailed with zero ability to communicate with anyone... You get the idea, it was clearly a criminal case. Miraculously, on appeal, the name of the case changed and the prosecutor and county judge just pretended it had always been a civil seizure case, that civil seizure having been dropped into the midst of a criminal case; IMO, completely illegally and in violation of the rules and laws of procedure governing judicial proceedings and the very fundamentals of justice.
The bottom line reason this is all significant is that Marion County essentially combined civil and criminal proceedings to give them the ability to arrest and coerce while not apparently actually pursuing the criminal charges. In addition, civil and criminal cases are subject to different rules and deadlines, by dumping them in together, Marion County made it virtually impossible for them to defend themselves as the rules are incompatible and it is impossible to tell what one's defense requirements are in a case jumbled up like this.
An attorney has agreed to take this case up on appeal but the retainer is $15,000 with the need to raise at least $5,000 of that by Tuesday. As with USGE, these animals were income producing. Hoffmann and Lulling have now been in this particular fight for over 2 months (and that was after 2 moves and surviving and tending the animals through Hurricane Dolly prior to that). They are tapped out as a result of the activists' harassment to date and have asked for AOD's and your support to keep this abusive method of stealing animals from continuing and escalating.
I urge you to go to the AOD links above to make a gift to the defense fund and join the email group. Beyond that, please, please become active in the legislative process in your state as well as the federal process and urge others to do the same. We who love animals and approve of them in uses that benefit humans must join together and push back hard and persistently against the activists who would remove the animals from us and, eventually, from the planet. We know from history that animals not useful to us and under some form of our care and protection tend to go extinct; a concept the radical animal rights activists rather clearly fail to understand.