My Fellow Inmates Thought I’d Be Released Without Bail. The Court Set Mine at $10,000.
I’m facing 31 years in prison for rescuing beagles from Ridglan Farms.
I was arraigned today!
The prosecutor just filed three additional felony charges against me and each of my three co-defendants for nonviolently saving beagles from criminal abuse.
I now face 31 years in prison.
I pled not guilty.
“You’re getting out today. There’s no way they’ll give you bail for a nonviolent offense.”
That’s what my fellow inmates told me as we awaited our bail hearings after several days in Dane County jail.
It was a Tuesday afternoon, and I had spent the last few days in a jail dorm sleeping in rows of metal bunk beds with about thirty other men.
This was after being arrested over the weekend for trying to rescue dogs from Ridglan Farms. It was my second visit to Dane County jail in recent months, and by then, the inmates and even the police knew why I was there.
I was the only animal activist in my dorm, even though I was arrested with dozens of others, including attorney and rescue organizer Wayne Hsiung. They separated us this time — I suppose to keep us from being in cahoots for yet another rescue.
The guys in my dorm knew about the beagles. Several had seen us on social media the month before — and we watched coverage of the latest rescue together on the jail TV.
I cheered with my fellow inmates as we watched news coverage of nearly 1,000 activists outside Ridglan — volunteers and grandmothers standing up to riot police, getting tear gassed and pepper sprayed, all while trying to reach dogs trapped behind barbed wire inside an illegal laboratory.
A number of the guys were very familiar with the jail system.
“Don’t worry,” several told me. “You’ll be out soon on a signature bond.”
A signature bond means you don’t have to pay money to get out. You promise to come back to court, and they release you.
That’s what they expected would happen to me. They had been in jail before, often on charges much more serious than mine. Some had been accused of assault and battery. One man told me he had previously been convicted of murder.
And they could not imagine that myself, a peaceful volunteer dog rescuer, would be held on cash bail.
So my fellow inmates were shocked when I walked back from court and told them I was being kept in jail on $10,000 bail.
Baffled, one of the guys showed me the criminal complaint filed against him.
“I’ll kill you all,” the report read.
According to the complaint, he had gotten drunk, assaulted people around him, and it took five police officers to restrain him before he was taken to jail.
He was released that day on a signature bond.
I was given $10,000 bail.
Luckily, I was able to post it. There was massive public outcry after Ridglan rescuers were tear gassed, and generous supporters moved quickly to cover my bail fund. My clothes from the arrest were still covered in pepper spray, so after four days of incarceration, I walked out of jail wearing county-provided shorts and a t-shirt.
A “dangerous” criminal
Why did the court decide that I needed such a high bail amount?
The commissioner who presided over my case told me why.
“The issues are emotional, they are politically charged… But you don’t get to take the law into your own hands.”
He said my “burglary” is “dangerous conduct” to engage in. Even though I have no previous criminal history, he ruled that “cash [bail] is necessary to protect the public.”
I have to say: it did hurt hearing the court’s words. I knew I would face consequences for challenging the dog testing industry. I was proud of why I was there, and I was ready to speak openly about our rescue efforts and defend everything I did.
And yet, there I was — surrounded by armed men and a prosecutor I had never met, while being told I must be prevented from harming others. I stood in a windowless courtroom in blue jail scrubs as the court called me “dangerous” for nonviolently trying to save criminally abused dogs.
But there was one statement that made me perk up.
“I don’t see any affirmative defenses that would be available” to justify my conduct.
That line hit me. It represented the entire reason why we are looking forward to trial.
Before the March rescue, when we saved nearly two dozen beagles from Ridglan Farms, we publicly argued that we had a legal right to rescue the dogs from abuse at Ridglan.
The dogs were victims of criminal abuse so severe that even a local judge granted our petition for the facility to be prosecuted for felony animal cruelty.
Judge Rhonda Lanford found “probable cause” of animal cruelty violations, and ruled that any “reasonably prudent prosecutor” would investigate, given overwhelming evidence of animals at the facility being confined in 2 x 4 foot wire cages their entire lives and surgically mutilated without anesthesia. She found it was improper that the district attorney refused to investigate them and ordered a special prosecutor to do so.
However, the special prosecutor also declined to prosecute — and did nothing to protect the 2,000 victims of ongoing felony animal cruelty at the facility.
At that point, we did everything we could within the law to protect the dogs. So we took action ourselves.
Under state and federal law, if you have exhausted all legal alternatives, you have a right under doctrines such as legal “necessity” that allow people to break lesser laws in order to prevent a greater harm.
We call this the Right to Rescue.
We have a Right to Rescue animals from abuse
If a dog is trapped in a hot car, you are allowed to break the window to save him. The same principle applies to a beagle facing illegal torture in a laboratory.
It is not a novel legal idea to apply this necessity defense to animals.
In one Wisconsin case, a police officer entered private property after seeing an emaciated horse in the front yard. He did not have a warrant. But after walking farther onto the property, he found more sick and dying horses.
The property owners argued that he had trespassed and violated their constitutional rights.
The court disagreed.
It ruled that the officer acted lawfully in an emergency situation. The property owner had rights — but the horses did, too. And their rights not to starve to death were significant enough to justify entering the property without a warrant.
In other words, Wisconsin law has already recognized that helping abused animals can justify “breaking” the law, including by trespassing on someone else’s property.
That is what Harvard Law professor Kristen Stilt, one of the nation’s leading scholars on animal and property law, described in an amicus brief in a previous prosecution of undercover Ridglan investigators — a case so damning to the company that prosecutors dropped it right before trial.
And yet there I was, standing in jail scrubs, as a court commissioner said he could see no possible legal justification for rescuing beagles from criminal abuse.
That was strange.
But it is also where the opportunity begins.
The risk is the reward
I am excited to go to trial because this case gives us a chance to argue, in court, that animals have legal rights — including the right to be rescued from abuse.
In Wisconsin, the “necessity defense” for animals has so far only been used for small-scale animal rescues. It has not been used to challenge powerful corporations.
Until now.
And this will be a challenging fight. We are going up against the biomedical industry which does tens of billions of dollars of business in Dane County — including through animal testing at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. They have already put out a press release calling us terrorists who should be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
But what they don’t realize is that the law already protects those who intervene to protect animals from harm.
We clearly disagree with the biomedical industry on the law here. And we’ll let a jury decide who is right.
By putting our freedom on the line, we will force courts to ask whether animals are mere “things” under the law — or living beings whose rights are significant enough to justify rescuing them.
A jury will get to answer this question. What matters more: a corporation’s property rights, or an animal left to suffer in a wire cage and die?
Their answer could set case law that affects millions of animals in laboratories across the country.
And by going through a criminal trial, it will not be corrupt prosecutors or politicians who will answer that question. It will be a jury of ordinary people.
I have a deep belief in the goodness of humanity: that when we get past financial corruption and political power — when people have a chance to deliberate in a court of law and look deeply into our relationship with our fellow creatures — that we as a species will act on what we already believe deep in our hearts: that animals are sentient beings who feel love and fear and joy, just like us.
We are meant to be protectors of our fellow creatures, not their tormentors. That is who we are as a species. And risking prison time is a chance to bring that to light.
These beagles are giving us an opportunity to become the protectors our species was always meant to be. Let’s make it happen.
UPDATE: I’m facing even more felony charges!
I was arraigned today in my first court hearing since the prosecutor formally filed charges against me.
They’ve filed three additional felony charges against me, for a total of 31 years in prison.
Again, this is an opportunity. Each charge builds public outrage against the brutality of the system — and reveals how deeply the legal system has violated animals for years.
But whether these charges result in prison time for rescuers or political change for the animals depends on what all of us, together as a movement, do next.
I’ll keep writing as this case unfolds. Thank you for following and sharing these posts. And stay up-to-date with trial updates on Facebook and Instagram.
How you can help
Join our efforts to save all dogs from cruel lab testing. Sign up at savethedogs.io which will let you receive emails on next steps from the team.
If you want to support me personally — including my volunteer advocacy, writing, and trial-related costs — you can become a paid subscriber to my Substack.
Thank you for reading and for caring so much for the dogs. Let’s save them all!
The fact that you’re now facing felonies and the possibility of decades in prison for trying to save dogs tells us something unmistakable: these institutions know they’re on the wrong side of history. And when they know that, they don’t soften — they double down. They punish the people who reveal what they don’t want the world to see.
You and your co‑defendants acted out of compassion. The severity of what you’re all facing now shows how afraid the system is of that compassion inspiring others to act with the same courage.
Cleverly strategized and set precedence if you guys win. Pls win this war!