By Marwa Eltagouri, March 2016
An animal rights activist was sentenced to both home and community confinement Wednesday for breaking into a downstate Morris farm with a longtime friend and releasing more than 2,000 minks into the wild while armed with bolt cutters and with his face covered.
In handing down the sentence, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve called Tyler Lang's actions "counterproductive," noting that hundreds of the minks died and many others suffered.
"This is a very serious offense that caused a substantial loss to the victim. It wiped out their business and life savings," St. Eve said of the owner of the farm, Robert Rodeghero, who attended the sentencing in U.S. District Court in Chicago, and his family. "You destroyed their feelings of security and their trust of others, in addition to their business."
The family declined to talk to a Tribune reporter.
The judge sentenced Lang to six months of home confinement followed by six months in a work release center. She also imposed a three-month prison term, but Lang had already served that in a downstate jail following his arrest. He was also ordered to pay $200,000 in restitution to the victims.
Lang and his friend Kevin Johnson, both of California, were in the midst of a cross-country journey to sabotage animal farms when they were stopped by police downstate a few days after the Morris incident. They were only a few miles from a fox farm in Woodford County that they planned to sabotage as well, authorities said.
Johnson, 29, who has a more extensive criminal history, was sentenced last month to three years in prison and was also ordered to pay $200,000.
Lang, 27, did not speak in court before St. Eve imposed the sentence. Instead, he wrote a letter to the judge expressing his regret, according to his attorney, Geoffrey Meyer. The letter was not read aloud in court.
Lang had pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to travel in interstate commerce with the purpose of damaging an animal enterprise.
Prosecutors had wanted to imprison Lang for up to 21 months, in part due to allegations of Lang's involvement in demonstrations against animal testing outside the homes of University of California-Los Angeles researchers. Assistant U.S. Attorney Bethany Biesenthal called the protests "harassment" and compared the activity to the break-in at the Rodeghero's farm.
But St. Eve dismissed those claims and referred to the protests as "lawful picketing."
While Biesenthal conceded that Johnson was likely the mastermind of the anti-fur road trip, she argued that both men played equal roles in breaking in to the Morris farm.
"It's heartbreaking to think about how hard this family worked for this small business," she said. "It was gone in an instant."
In handing down her sentence, St. Eve said she took into account that Lang has stayed out of trouble since his release from jail in November 2013.
"I take that as a positive sign," she said.
(originally poasted by Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-animal-rights-activist-sentence-met-20160323-story.html)
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