Beulah's death exposed a cruel legal paradox the Nonhuman Rights Project is committed to overturning.
Because she was an elephant, Beulah was an attractive commodity to use in entertainment events like the Big E. The Commerford Zoo exhibited her to paying audiences precisely because she was an intelligent, social being whose very presence attracted crowds. Her elephantness made her a spectacle worth paying to see.
Yet when we petitioned for her freedom, that same elephantness rendered her invisible to the law. The Connecticut Appellate Court ruled just weeks before her death in August of 2019 that elephants categorically lack standing to seek habeas corpus—a centuries-old means of challenging the lawfulness of someone’s confinement. No matter how intelligent, no matter how severe her confinement, no matter how great her suffering, the Connecticut court determined that because Beulah was an elephant the court would not exercise its common law authority to even examine (let alone remedy) the wrongfulness of her captivity. In the view of the court, Beulah’s injuries were so insignificant the court did not even have the ability to hear her case.
The court justified this legal invisibility on the basis that elephants are "incapable of bearing legal duties, submitting to societal responsibilities, or being held legally accountable." But Beulah's submission was on display her entire life. Audiences watched her comply with her owners' demands for decades—performing on command, giving rides despite painful feet, standing still for countless photos. Her obedience was so visible that people paid to witness it. She was so responsive to the obligations imposed on her that she died in plain sight fulfilling them.
The court refused to see this forced labor. It refused to see her compliance under threat of a bullhook. It refused to see what every other member of the public could see: that she bore the ultimate responsibility—dying in service to her captors' profits. It refused to see her suffering.
Beulah was hypervisible when generating revenue but invisible when seeking justice. Forced to be on display for everyone except the legal system that should have saved her.
Correcting injustices like this is why the Nonhuman Rights Project exists. When any autonomous nonhuman being dies a prisoner, it underscores the moral imperative of our work and the urgent need for systemic change. Thirty years into the NhRP’s fight for nonhuman animal rights, we continue this work, with your support, in memory of those we’ve lost and with undiminished resolve for those still waiting for justice. Thank you.
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Christopher Berry
Executive Director, the NhRP
