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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Animal Rights ‘Terrorist’ Gets 21 Months in the Slammer

An animal rights activist was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison Tuesday, for a “calculated, premeditated reign of terror” over the fur industry in cross-country trips she took with an accomplice, the sentencing judge said.

SAN DIEGO (CN) — An animal rights activist was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison Tuesday, for a “calculated, premeditated reign of terror” over the fur industry in cross-country trips she took with an accomplice, the sentencing judge said.

Nicole Juanita Kissane, 30, of Oakland also was ordered to pay $423,477 in restitution to the mink farms she vandalized.

Her co-conspirator, Joseph Brian Buddenberg, 32, also of Oakland, was sentenced in May last year to two years in prison and ordered to pay $398,272 in restitution.

Both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.

They released minks from commercial farms and vandalized properties. Mink are vicious predators and their release wrought havoc and alarm among neighbors of the farms.

In sentencing her Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Larry Burns called Kissane’s acts a “calculated, premeditated reign of terror over those in the fur industry.”

Acting U.S. Attorney Alana W. Robinson added in a statement: “Vandalizing homes and businesses with acid, glue and chemicals in the dark of night is a form of domestic terrorism. Whatever your feelings about the fur industry, these sentences are a pretty strong signal that this isn’t the right way to effect change.”

Among the charges to which they admitted were slashing the tires of a meat distributor’s truck in San Francisco, smashing windows and super-gluing locks at a furrier in Minneapolis, vandalizing and trying to flood the home of a fur auctioneer’s employee in Wisconsin, and vandalizing and super-gluing a furrier in San Diego and the homes and personal property of the owner and former owner of the business.

Categories / Criminal

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