Court Dismisses PETA Charges

A Cambridge District Court Judge last month dismissed some of the charges against six activists for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) who shed their clothes in a Harvard Square protest on March 1.

Judge George Sprague dismissed charges of indecent exposure against the protesters on Aug. 27, but upheld charges of disturbing the peace. Self-proclaimed protest “ring-leader” Dan Mathews was found guilty of disturbing the peace and fined $300. In an interview yesterday, he said that he had already paid the penalty.

The disturbing the peace charges against the other protesters, including Pforzheimer resident Kristin M. Waller ’05, were “continued without a finding.” The decision means that if any of the five are arrested again within the next six months, they will be sentenced on the disturbing the peace charge, Middlesex County District Attorney spokesperson Emily LaGrassa said. Otherwise, those charges will also be dismissed.

“If we hadn’t agreed to the findings, then we would have had to go to a jury trial for wearing underwear,” said Mathews, the vice president of PETA. The defendants and the prosecutor both accepted the judge’s decision.

In March, the protesters posed in their underwear and staged a pillow fight near the Harvard Square T Station to protest the mistreatment of animals. Mathews said that when the police asked them to disperse, they crossed the street, and were arrested.

“The whole thing was trumped up,” said Mathews, who had been invited to speak at a Harvard class on the afternoon of the protest. “They told us to move and we moved and we tried to cross the street and then they charged us.”

But LaGrassa said that the “incident in general was a disturbance.”

Michael A. Vitali, the attorney for the protesters, said that Mathews was in a different position from the other defendants because the “judge saw him as a provocateur.”

But Vitali said that Mathews’ sentence works better for him because he’s “not restrained with respect to future campaigns.” He said that unlike the other defendants, Mathews had pled guilty to the disturbing the peace charge partly because otherwise he would have had to go six months without being arrested.

Indeed, Mathews said that he has been arrested over 20 times since he joined PETA.

But he said he had alternate reasons to plead guilty and pay the fine. Mathews said that he has had to travel to Cambridge three times over the summer for court hearings.

“Each time it was an hour or two, but we had to travel from all over the country,” he said. “We weren’t going to shirk our responsibility.”

Mathews said he had no immediate plans for another Harvard Square protest but that he “was always open for more appearances.”

Waller could not be reached for comment.

—Staff writer Joseph M. Tartakoff can be reached at tartakof@fas.harvard.edu