New York
judge grants writ of habeas corpus to Hercules and Leo, chimpanzees used for
medical experiments, to defend rights against imprisonment
The Guardian, Alan Yuhas in New York, Tuesday 21 April 2015
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| The judge’s argument in this case and others is that chimpanzees are intelligent, emotionally complex and self-aware enough to merit some basic human rights. Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP |
For the
first time in US history, a judge has granted two chimpanzees a petition –
through human attorneys – to defend their rights against unlawful imprisonment,
arguably bestowing the status of “legal persons” on the primates.
On Monday,
Manhattan supreme court justice Barbara Jaffe granted a writ of habeas corpus on
behalf of two non-human plaintiffs, Hercules and Leo – chimpanzees used for
medical experiments at Stony Brook University on Long Island.
In her
order, Jaffe ordered Samuel Stanley Jr, the president of Stony Brook, to argue
before the court why the chimpanzees were being “unlawfully detained” at his
university and should not be transferred to a primate sanctuary in Florida.
The
attorneys who brought the petition forward, part of the Nonhuman Rights Project
(NhRP), argue that under New York law, “only a ‘legal person’ may have an order
to show cause and writ of habeas corpus issued in his or her behalf. The court
has therefore implicitly determined that Hercules and Leo are ‘persons’.”
“This is
one step in a long, long struggle,” said Steven Wise, the lawyer leading the
effort. “She never says explicitly that our non-human plaintiffs were persons
but by issuing the order … she’s either saying implicitly that they are or that
they certainly can be. So that’s the first time that has happened.
“It feels
great. We knew it was going to happen sometime,” he added. “Even though we’re
scattered all around the country we all gave each other a high five over the
phone.”
Habeas
corpus petitions are used, in theory, to fight unlawful imprisonment by forcing
a custodian to prove they have legal cause to detain someone.
Wise’s
argument in this case and others is that chimpanzees are intelligent, emotionally complex and self-aware enough to merit some basic human rights,
such as the rights against illegal detainment and cruel treatment. They are
“autonomous and self-determining”, in Wise’s words.
He said he
suspects that Eric Schneiderman, who will represent Stony Brook as attorney
general of New York, will argue that “Hercules and Leo are things and that
they’re not persons, and that’s where the battle lines are drawn. Are they
persons or are they not persons?”
Schneiderman
may also draw from past rejections of Wise’s petitions. In one failed bid to
remove another chimpanzee, Tommy, from captivity in a trailer in Gloversville,
New York, an appeals court argued that chimpanzees do not participate in
society and cannot be held accountable for their actions.
“In our
view,” the judges wrote, “it is this incapability to bear any legal
responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer
upon chimpanzees the legal rights … that have been afforded to human beings.”
In another
decision, a separate appeals court argued that taking a different chimpanzee,
Kiko, to a sanctuary amounted to another form of imprisonment, and that habeas
corpus amounted to an inappropriate remedy.
NhRP hopes
to move the chimpanzees to the Save the Chimps sanctuary in Fort Pierce,
Florida, where more than 250 chimps live on a series of islands along the
Atlantic coast.
Kathy
Hessler, a professor of animal law at Lewis & Clark law school, told the Guardian that Wise’s burden is to prove chimps are “enough like a human that
the legal system should take notice”.
Opponents
of Wise’s fight for limited rights for chimpanzees warn that the judge’s
granting of the petition does not mean she endorses “personhood” for
chimpanzees. Richard Cupp, a law professor at California’s Pepperdine
University said “we should avoid reading too much into this document ordering a
hearing.”
“It seems
quite unlikely that a judge would intend to make such an exceptionally
controversial decision that a chimpanzee is a person without even hearing
arguments from the other side,” Cupp said. The suggestion that nonhuman animals
are persons is “new terrain for judges”, he added.
Cupp and
others argue that chimpanzees may deserve greater protections, but not rights.
“No one should ever regard animals as if they were stones,” Richard Epstein, a
New York University law professor told the Guardian last year, but he said that
Wise and his cohorts go too far into a labyrinth of questions about what
separates humans from nonhuman animals.
NhRP has
appealed against the decisions in Kiko and Tommy’s cases, and its next hearing
on behalf of Hercules and Leo is scheduled for 6 May.
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