20 Days in Jail

Flying CHARC Temporarily Grounded

CHICAGO, IL -- Steve Hindi of the Chicago Animal Rights Coalition (CHARC) was sentenced to 6 months in jail for contempt of court when the judge found him to be in violation of an illegally served temporary restraining order which banned Hindi from protesting the Woodstock Hunt Club in Illinois. Hindi was jailed for 20 days, the last eleven of which he spent on hunger strike. Judge James Franz finally released Hindi on $50,000 bond after an Illinois Appellate Court ruling ordered that Hindi no longer be held without bail.

The temporary restraining order was issued on 10/11/96 by Judge Franz of McHenry County, despite the fact that it violated the First Amendment rights of the activists. Franz granted the order based on charges, brought by Earl Johnson, owner of the Woodstock Hunt Club, that Hindi and 2 other activists, Steve and Carol Gross, had interfered with the killing of birds by using sirens, horns and an ultralight aircraft. (CHARC has pioneered the use of paragliders and undercover video cameras.) Hindi was not officially notified of the restraining order.

On 11/6/96, Johnson went back to court to ask that the temporary restraining order be changed to a permanent one and further asked that Hindi be charged with contempt of court because he returned to the hunt club on 10/12/96 to videotape hunters and ask them through a megaphone to consider not killing the wildlife. Judge Franz then sentenced Hindi to 180 days in jail. As soon as he pronounced sentence, 3 bailiffs walked into the court and 2 armed corrections officers entered through the back door and took Hindi into custody. Apparently, the judge had already made his decision before even hearing closing arguments. Franz refused to stay the sentence pending appeal, and also entered a permanent injunction against CHARC and other protesters.

Johnson, owner of the hunt club, had filed a civil suit against CHARC for $411,000 in damages, claiming lost revenue because he had to cancel hunts on 4 days that the protesters drove the geese away with aircraft and bullhorns. However, on 11/12/96, Johnson suffered a fatal heart attack in one of his own hunting blinds. It is not yet clear what effect his death will have on the criminal or civil cases, but we're pretty sure we know how the birds would feel if they knew!

Hindi, who is president of an industrial fasteners company and is married with 2 children, began a hunger strike on 11/15, vowing not to eat until he is released to protest the denial of his basic constitutional rights and his outrageous sentence, which many civil libertarians have called "excessive".

Steve was a political prisoner unjustly incarcerated in an attempt to stifle dissent. He has been in the forefront of the fight for animal liberation for many years, and has always advocated using high-tech methods and equipment to free the animals. As he has said many times, the abusers and exploiters have state of the art technology with which to imprison and torture animals and we can level the playing field by beating them at their own game.