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| John L. Hill |
The organization explains that we have been ingrained with notions it calls speciesism, a misguided belief that one species is more important than another. It urges that it’s time to recognize that all sentient beings deserve to be treated with respect and compassion and that every animal has the right to live free from human exploitation.
People who denounce speciesism sometimes take extreme measures to raise awareness of how our society exploits nonhuman living creatures. Amy Soranno and Nicholas Schafer were animal rights activists determined to raise public awareness of their cause. Soranno — a 26-year-old college graduate — and Schafer — a 36-year-old photographer, filmmaker and videographer — led 50 people to break into the Excelsior Hog Farm in Abbotsford, B.C. The group demanded that the media be allowed to film the conditions in which pigs were kept.
The farming operation complied with the demand, and the protesters left voluntarily two hours later but were
archivector: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM
The two were convicted after a jury trial of breaking and entering and committing the indictable offence of mischief. They were sentenced to 30 days of intermittent jail and 12 months of probation (R. v. Soranno, 2022 BCSC 1795). An appeal against the conviction was dismissed (R. v. Soranno, 2024 BCCA 5).
On June 24, 2024, the British Columbia Court of Appeal decided on the sentence appeal (R. v. Soranno, 2024 BCCA 230). The defence had asked for an absolute or conditional discharge, arguing that the protest was peaceful and nonviolent. They also claimed the appellants had suffered enough by going through the legal proceedings and having a finding of guilt.
One of the more interesting grounds that Soranno presented on appeal was that the trial judge erred in unduly limiting her right to address the court before sentencing. In her address to the court, Soranno explained that she was in court because she felt it her duty to expose atrocities not only at the hog farm but also in the agriculture industry broadly, which exacts cruelty to chickens, cows, turkeys and pigs. The trial judge limited her submission. He understood her sincerity, but the court should not be used as a platform for expressing political views that have no bearing on the court’s decision.
Giving an accused person the right to make a statement before a sentence is passed is the right of allocution. It was embedded into the common law in the English case of R. v. Geary, [1689] 89 E.R. 495 (K.B.). The right has been included as s. 726 of the Criminal Code so that an accused could express remorse. The section also reminds the court that it deals with a real human being and not solely the mechanical application of laws (R. v. Rigler, 2013 BCCA 117). However, failure to comply with s. 726 creates error only when it can be shown that the omission would have made a substantial prejudice or resulted in a miscarriage of justice (R. v. Andel, 2014 BCCA 158, and R. v. MacMillan, 2003 BCCA 372).
The appeal court noted that a judge must be permitted to control the courtroom. Without using the term “freedom of speech,” the appeal court weighed that freedom against the court’s responsibility to ensure that justice results. The court said in paragraph 43 of its judgment, “…it is not unusual for some litigants to try to use the courtroom to make political speeches, whether it be against taxes, vaccines, or government measures, or whether it be to advance fanciful and unfounded allegations of widespread corruption and conspiracy, or something else. The process in the courtroom is designed to resolve disputes, not to give people a captive audience and to force others to listen to whatever they want to say for however long they want to say it.” However, the court quickly added that no actual harm is done when an offender ventures briefly into irrelevancy.
The fact that Soranno was not allowed to describe the conditions she witnessed in the barn did not deprive her of her right of allocution. No miscarriage of justice resulted.
The appeal succeeded on the grounds that an amendment to the Code was made after the sentencing, which now allows a conditional sentence for the offence for which Soranno and Schafer were convicted. They are entitled to benefit from that change (R. v. Bunn, 2000 SCC 9).
Therefore, given these offenders' particular attributes and the circumstances of the case, a 120-day conditional sentence with a one-year probation was imposed.
No actual offenders were harmed in the making of this judgment.
John L. Hill practised and taught prison law until his retirement. He holds a J.D. from Queen’s and an LL.M. in constitutional law from Osgoode Hall. He is also the author of Pine Box Parole: Terry Fitzsimmons and the Quest to End Solitary Confinement (Durvile & UpRoute Books). Contact him at johnlornehill@hotmail.com.
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