It’s Week 3, Day 8 of the Zoe Rosenberg chicken rescue trial—a case that’s already stirring headlines and emotions far beyond Sonoma County, California. Today’s focus is jury selection, known as voir dire, where potential jurors are questioned to determine if they can be fair and impartial. It’s a key step, because the people chosen today will ultimately decide this 23-year old animal cruelty investigator’s fate.
She is charged with felony conspiracy and several misdemeanors for a June 2023 rescue of 4 chickens from a Perdue-owned slaughterhouse.
Already, hundreds of Sonoma County residents have been summoned, and many have claimed hardship, given that the trial could stretch on for weeks. In fact, we’re now two weeks in, and much of that time has been consumed by heated hearings over what evidence the jury will actually be allowed to hear. One particularly fierce battle centers on bird condemnation records photographed by another animal cruelty investigator while she was inside the very slaughterhouse where Zoe carried out her rescue. The defense insists this evidence is vital, as it shows the conditions Zoe was responding to. Zoe maintains she repeatedly tried to get authorities to investigate her allegations of sick and dying birds arriving for slaughter and it was law enforcement’s refusal to act that directly influenced her decision to go in and get those 4 birds out herself. Prosecutors, on the other hand, are pushing hard to limit that narrative.
The stakes are high: prosecutors want to lock up Zoe for nearly five years, while her supporters say this case could flip the script and put industrial animal agriculture itself on trial. Perdue continues to deny all allegations of cruelty and has an open invitation to further present its perspective.
Meanwhile, the trial’s resonance continues to grow outside the courthouse. Country music star Simone Reyes gave a nod to the case during a performance in Hollywood this weekend, praising Zoe’s farmed animal sanctuary, Happy Hen, which she visited. Reyes will be joining us live with her thoughts.
Stay with us as UnchainedTV’s Jane Velez-Mitchell anchors from the network’s LA studio, with reporter Matthew Zirbel at the courthouse in Northern California, alongside our panel of expert analysts.