There was some serious monkey business in state Supreme Court in Manhattan on Wednesday, with animal rights advocates arguing that a pair of chimpanzees should have the same legal rights as “persons” — and comparing them to slaves.
In a packed hearing, Steven Wise of the Nonhuman Rights Project urged Justice Barbara Jaffe to free two chimpanzees who are being used for experiments at Stony Brook University.
“We argue that as a matter of liberty and as a matter of equality, Hercules and Leo are indeed legal persons,” Wise said.
He also raised some eyebrows by comparing their plight to those of Native Americans and slaves.
Wise is trying to get the judge to sign a writ of habeus corpus to free the chimps and send them to a sanctuary. In court, Wise noted that slaves were recognized by New York courts in the mid-19th century as persons worthy of liberty when people filed writs of habeus corpus on their behalf, and the same was true in the late 1800s when native Americans sought writs, saying the federal government was keeping them unlawfully imprisoned on reservations.
Assistant state Attorney General Christopher Coulston, who was representing the state school, told the judge she’d be going down a “slippery slope” if she ruled in the group’s favor.
“This language about animals and slaves … this is the point I’m talking about with the slippery slope,” Coulston said.
Wise told the judge that scientific research supports his contention that chimps are autonomous creatures who can think, plan and do math.
“They don’t act on instinct (alone). They understand the concept of tomorrow. They plan what their life is going to be like. They have culture that they pass down from generation to generation. They can remember the past and plan for the future,” he argued.
Being held at Stony Brook for locomotion experiments is like being “in prison” for them, he contended.
“They don’t understand why they’re there. They’re 8 years old. They’ve been there since they were 3. They’re essentially in solitary confinement,” he said. “That is what we do to the worst human criminals.”
Coulston countered that chimpanzees are a different species from human beings.
“The Great Writ(of habeus corpus)should be for human beings,” he said.
He also accused Wise of “venue shopping” because they’ve lost similar bids in three other counties.
The judge reserved decision.
Outside of court, Wise said he was in no way trying to compare chimps to human beings with his slavery argument.
“We are the first people to argue that a nonhuman animal should be free. The only thing we can do is analogize,” he said.
But Wise also added that “when you’re kept in a cage and have to do what your master tells you to do, I don’t know that you can call them anything but slaves.”
He said that the judge even granted the group a hearing was a win.
“Getting the hearing was the greatest obstacle the Nonhuman Rights Project faced. It’s a partial victory just standing here,” he said to the cheers of supporters who crowded around him outside of court.
The Nonhuman Rights Project, a Florida-based group led in part by famed chimp researcher Jane Goodall, wants Leo and Hercules moved to its animal sanctuary in Florida.
Wise said after chimps, the group wants to use writs to free orcas, elephants and other apes.
