Amahle, Nolwazi, and Mabu

The NhRP files a habeas corpus petition in the San Francisco Superior Court, demanding recognition of Amahle, Nolwazi, and Vusmusi’s right to liberty and their release from the Fresno Chaffee Zoo to an elephant sanctuary.

The Fresno Chaffee Zoo’s “imprisonment of Amahle, Nolwazi, and Vusmusi,” the NhRP writes, “violates their common law right to bodily liberty protected by habeas corpus and is therefore unlawful because it deprives the elephants of their ability to meaningfully exercise their autonomy and extraordinary cognitive complexity, including the freedom to choose where to go, what to do, and with whom to be. Whether Respondents are in compliance with animal welfare statutes is irrelevant to the lawfulness of the elephants’ imprisonment as none of those statutes address the right to bodily liberty.”

In an affidavit submitted with the petition, elephant expert Dr. Keith Lindsay describes the physical and psychological suffering of the Fresno elephants caused by their lack of freedom:

The life of these three elephants at Fresno Chaffee Zoo is nothing but a succession of boring and frustrating days, damaging to their bodies and minds, and punctuated only by interaction with their keepers. Their physical and psychological health has been severely compromised by the sustained deprivation of their autonomy and freedom of movement. They spend at least half, if not more, of each day in a barn with very little cushioning for their feet and joints. When allowed outside, they are unable to walk more than 100 yards in any direction, they have limited shade from the sun, and their artificial water features are not deep enough to allow proper bathing. The elephants receive predictable enrichment activities, are unable to communicate over large distances, and their acute hearing is bombarded by constant auditory disturbances from major transportation arteries on all four sides of their enclosure.

Read and download the affidavits submitted in support by Keith Lindsay, Lucy Bates and Richard W. Byrne, Bob Jacobs, Karen McComb, Cynthia Moss, and Joyce Poole.

Read our press release here.

The Fresno Chaffee Zoo files an emergency motion asking the San Francisco Superior Court to transfer the venue of the case from San Francisco to Fresno. Following a short hearing, the Court denies the Fresno Chaffee Zoo’s emergency motion asking the Court to transfer venue on procedural grounds, ruling that the zoo has to submit its transfer request by regularly noticed motion, which gives the NhRP time to reply in opposition. The Fresno Chaffee Zoo files a noticed notion the same day.

The NhRP files our opposition to the Fresno Chaffee Zoo’s motion asking the court to transfer venue. In it, we make clear that a transfer can only be ordered for a substantial reason, and no substantial reason exists in this case. Moreover, the Fresno Chaffee Zoo is wrong to request a transfer on the grounds that the zoo is in Fresno and the Fresno County community “stands the most to lose from the [elephants’ habeas corpus] petition.” As we write, this argument “completely ignores that this is a habeas corpus proceeding. Whether the Fresno County community may want to see Amahle, Nolwazi, and Vusmusi kept at the zoo is no basis for transferring the Petition. When an individual is illegally imprisoned, it is irrelevant whether members of the community want to see that individual kept in prison.”

The NhRP files a petition for a writ of mandate in the 1st District Court of Appeal (the relevant appellate court) in order to challenge the transfer order. We argue the transfer order is invalid because the Court failed to provide a substantial reason for transferring our case, and the erroneous reason it gave (i.e., that the NhRP is challenging the elephants’ conditions of confinement in Fresno as one might in an animal welfare case, while we’re actually challenging the legality of their imprisonment) could adversely impact our case in the Fresno Superior Court if the transfer order is allowed to stand. Our petition asks the appellate court to stay further proceedings until it has decided our petition for a writ of mandate.

The NhRP files a motion for an order transferring the elephants’ case back to the San Francisco Superior Court. The San Francisco Superior Court had previously ordered the case transferred to the Fresno Superior Court on the basis of a rule that permits a court to transfer a case to the county in which the habeas petitioner is confined if the habeas corpus petition “challenges the conditions of an inmate’s confinement.” This reason for transfer, the NhRP argues, is inapplicable because the petition, importantly, does not challenge the conditions of the elephants’ confinement at Fresno Chaffee Zoo, but rather the legality of their imprisonment itself.

NhRP Staff Attorney Jake Davis argues before Fresno Superior Court Judge Mark Cullers in a hearing on our motion asking the Court to transfer the elephants’ case back to the San Francisco Superior Court. Adam Hofmann, arguing for the Fresno Chaffee Zoo, argued that the NhRP’s petition does challenge the conditions of the elephants’ confinement and that this case belongs in Fresno because that’s where the elephants are located. At the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Cullers denies the NhRP’s motion, stating he agrees with San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Ulmer’s ruling (which granted the Fresno Chaffee Zoo’s motion to transfer venue) and what the Fresno Chaffee Zoo had argued. This means the case will stay in the Fresno Superior Court, where Judge Cullers will rule on the merits of the NhRP’s habeas corpus petition.

Judge Harrell denies the elephants’ habeas corpus petition on the grounds that the petition does not allege, as the Court believes it must, that the elephants are held in “state custody” (due to, for example, a prison sentence imposed by a court). We announce we will challenge this decision and will share our next legal steps in the coming weeks. We also announce our plans to take on Mabu as a client.

The NhRP files a new habeas corpus petition in the Fifth District Court of Appeal, demanding Amahle, Nolwazi, and Mabu’s right to liberty and their release to a sanctuary or a rewilding facility. The petition details how the Fresno Superior Court was wrong to deny the NhRP’s first petition on the grounds that the petition didn’t allege that the elephants are held in state custody: under longstanding California law, you don’t have to be in state custody in order to challenge your imprisonment. “The practical effect of the Superior Court’s decision prohibits privately detained humans from availing themselves of habeas corpus,” the NhRP writes. Read our press release here.

The NhRP files a petition for a common law writ of habeas corpus in the California Supreme Court, arguing Nolwazi, Amahle, and Mabu are entitled to a hearing to determine whether they must be released from their unjust imprisonment in the Fresno Chaffee Zoo. The NhRP is also asking the Court to reject Judge Harrell’s November 2022 order and clarify that an individual doesn’t need to be in state custody in order to meet habeas corpus jurisdictional requirements. 

Amicus/amici letters are submitted in support of the NhRP by The Hon. Edwin Cameron (a retired judge who served as a Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa), David Favre (Nancy Heathcote Professor of Property and Animal Law at Michigan State College of Law), Stephen Tauber (Professor of Political Science in the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies at the University of South Florida), Maneesha Decka (Professor and Lansdowne Chair in Law at the University of Victoria, Faculty of Law in Victoria, British Columbia), and Dr. Andrew Linzey and Dr. Clair Linzey (Professors of Animal Theology affiliated with the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics).

Amicus/amici letters are submitted in support of the NhRP by the nonprofit organization Friends of Animals, a group of Buddhist scholars, and a group of UK-based legal academics, solicitors and barristers with expertise in animal law.

An amici letter is submitted by Peter Singer (Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University), Gary Comstock (Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor of Philosophy at North Carolina State University), and Adam Lerner (Post-doctoral Associate at the Center for Population-Level Bioethics at Rutgers University).

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An amici letter is submitted by Matthew Liebman (Associate Professor Chair, Justice for Animals Program, University of San Francisco School of Law) and 22 other law professors from across the US and Canada.

The California Supreme Court denies our habeas corpus petition. No reason is given. Our statement:

Anyone who cares about protecting elephants or autonomy should be disappointed that the state’s highest court has dismissed Amahle, Nolwazi, and Mabu’s habeas corpus petition without allowing the merits to be litigated. The evidence on the record in this case is irrefutable that Amahle, Nolwazi and Mabu are suffering immense physical and psychological harm from the loss of their freedom in the Fresno Chaffee Zoo. Twenty-first century judges must have the courage to address this suffering and the tremendous injustice of elephant captivity, which is made legally possible by elephants’ rightlessness.

While this Court’s order is final, it should not be viewed as an exoneration of the Fresno Chaffee Zoo, and neither the Fresno Chaffee Zoo nor any other California zoo should be breathing a sigh of relief. In court and beyond, on behalf of all nineteen elephants held captive in zoos throughout the state, we intend to fight for as long as it takes to end elephant imprisonment and secure elephants’ right to liberty.