PETA Trial, Day 1:
Jury Selection, and a Bombshell

January 22, 2007 | Day One at the PETA-Kills-Animals trial began with a whimper but ended with an unexpected bang. At the very end of a day consumed by the mundane business of pre-trial motions and jury selection, defense lawyers for PETA employees Adria Hinkle and Andrew Cook asked Hertford County (NC) Superior Court Judge Cy Grant to schedule one final defense motion -- a request "to exclude evidence of other crimes" from the trial.

Asked by Judge Grant for her take on this legal maneuver, District Attorney Valerie Asbell explained: "The other crimes, the other things they're seeking to exclude, are prior dumpings of animals."

Judge Grant: "Do you have evidence of this?"

D.A. Asbell: "Yes."

So prosecutors apparently have proof that Hinkle and Cook were responsible for animal dumping on a larger scale than their June 2005 arrest alone would suggest. What are the odds of this being true? Pretty good, actually. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has reported killing over 14,400 pets since 1998. So whether or not a jury ever hears about it, there's reason to believe the 31 dead animals involved in this case are the tip of a larger iceberg.

The trial itself will begin on Tuesday with opening statements at 1:30pm, after one more morning of wrangling over the makeup of the jury. By 5:00pm on Monday, prosecutors had dismissed three potential jurors and PETA's lawyers dismissed five more. Both sides agreed on eight, leaving four (and two alternates) to be chosen from the pool of 70-odd citizens who answered the call for Jury Duty on Monday.

The PETA team's objections were mostly predictable, including their legal challlenge of two men who announced that they were avid hunters. (Said one of PETA, understating the obvious: "Well, it's kinda anti-hunting.") One female juror didn't meet PETA's standards for an obvious reason: her bait-store sweatshirt, advertising "Bass Pro Shops."

The defense lawyers' choice of questions for potential jurors might provide some insight into the coming trial strategy.

Hinkle defender Jack Warmack asked often about jurors' jobs, focusing on whether they supervised other people and had the authority to "hire and fire" them. Could this be a sign that Hinkle will claim she was just following orders? Time will tell.

And Cook attorney Mark Edwards implored the jury pool to assure him that if his client "happens to crack a smile or laugh … that you won't think he's not taking this seriously." Will Andrew Cook be painted as a jocular boy-next-door? Only his lawyer knows for sure.

One thing we can be sure of is that PETA is taking this trial seriously. In addition to three trial lawyers for Adria Hinkle and one for Andrew Cook, PETA in-house counsel Jeff Kerr was in the courtroom today. So was the recently retired long-time PETA litigator Phil Hirschkop. Kathy Guillermo, a 17-year PETA veteran, was pressed into service to talk to media outside the courthouse ("I didn't know I'd be coming until the last minute," she told one reporter). And at least three PETA legal interns were on hand to see the wheels of justice turn -- oiled, we're told, with something vegan.

Watch this space daily, as we report from the courtroom in Winton, North Carolina. And click below for a few of today's major-media reports about the trial:

The New York Post
WVEC-TV (Norfolk, VA)
WNCT-TV (Greenville, NC)
Court TV
The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)
WAVY-TV (Hampton Roads, VA)
Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald (Ahoskie, NC)
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