Dear John, 

Ten years ago today, a judge showed extraordinary courage in response to one of our first habeas corpus petitions on behalf of a nonhuman animal. 

Donate today to help celebrate 30 years of the NhRP’s unique legal fight for nonhuman rights.

On April 20, 2015, New York Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe issued a habeas corpus order requiring the New York Attorney General’s office to come to court to justify the imprisonment of our chimpanzee clients Hercules and Leo. At that time, Hercules and Leo were held captive in a basement lab for use in non-medical locomotion research at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. This research involved frequent administrations of general anesthesia and the insertion of fine-wire electrodes into their muscles. During those years, Hercules and Leo never saw daylight or breathed fresh air. Born at the New Iberia Research Center and leased to Stony Brook, they’d been taken from their mothers when they were very young.

What Justice Jaffe did that day was truly remarkable. Her order was a huge legal first for all nonhuman animals and was widely reported on as such. Essentially, she was saying to the world that arguments in support of our clients’ right to liberty deserved to be heard. The burden was on Stony Brook to explain why Hercules and Leo shouldn’t be released from their unjust detention, just as it would’ve been had they unjustly detained a human being. 

I have to tell you, I was shocked and awed when this happened–in the best possible way. Everyone at the NhRP was. Not only had the order we’d been fighting for been granted; it was granted only a year and half into our litigation, which challenges centuries of animals’ “thinghood,” or rightlessness.

As in any movement for social justice that plays out in part through the courts, you need one judge who has the courage to be the first–the courage to go beyond an entrenched status quo to uphold the values and principles of justice judges hold dear, like liberty, equality, and fairness. This encourages other judges to do the same. That’s exactly what Justice Jaffe did, and that’s exactly what happened in subsequent years. 

Ultimately, Justice Jaffe concluded after Hercules and Leo’s hearing that she was bound by prior appellate decisions in our clients Tommy and Kiko’s cases that denied their right to liberty. But that doesn’t change the magnitude of Justice Jaffe having ordered a hearing in the first place. 

The hearing ignited a global debate about Hercules and Leo’s suffering and rightlessness and catalyzed public pressure calling for an end to their imprisonment. That same summer, Stony Brook voluntarily stopped using Hercules and Leo in research and in 2018, they became residents of Project Chimps sanctuary. Their lives as research subjects are now behind them. 

So today, as we continue to celebrate our 30th anniversary and the progress we’ve made together, we again commend Justice Jaffe for making this progress possible through her act of judicial courage. Next month, as we consider several key NhRP milestones that took place in May, we’ll share NhRP Senior Staff Attorney Spencer Lo’s reflections on the hearing itself.

Thank you for reading and for all your support, John, and I hope you have a good week ahead.

Elizabeth Stein

Litigation Director, the NhRP

The NhRP is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) corporation (Tax ID #: 04-3289466). It is solely through your donations that we can continue to work for the recognition and protection of fundamental rights for nonhuman animals.

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