Last Tuesday afternoon, January 18, the Wright County Attorney’s Office filed a motion to dismiss all charges against Matthew Johnson. Johnson had been scheduled to stand trial in Wright County starting Thursday for third-degree burglary and electronic or mechanical eavesdropping relating to a May of 2020 break in at a Iowa Select Farms hog facility in rural Dows. Johnson and another woman had planted audiovisual equipment at the facility and taken a piglet.
After the state filed the motion to dismiss, Johnson subsequently filed a motion of resistance to the dismissal on Tuesday. According to Johnson’s motion “the State must provide the reasons for dismissal before any such motion can be granted. Because the Motion fails to provide a legally-sufficient reason for the dismissal – and because Johnson has not had the opportunity to clear his name (or vindicate his constitutional right to freedom of speech) – the Motion is legally insufficient.”
A press release from the group Direct Action Everywhere, which Johnson is a part of, noted Johnson filed the motion of resistance in order to present at trial evidence of the ventilation shutdown killings at Iowa Select Farms, but ultimately that didn’t happen.
In a hearing on Wednesday afternoon, Judge Derek Johnson did indeed dismiss all charges against Johnson in the Wright County case. This is not the first time a case against Johnson has been dismissed in Iowa. Less than a year ago, a Grundy County prosecutor also dropped trespassing charges against Johnson — again just before trial — in a similar case in which Johnson recorded Iowa Select Farms employees killing thousands of pigs near the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when demand for the animals plummeted amid shutdowns.
Jen Sorenson, Iowa Select Farms Communications Director, said Iowa Select Farms had asked the Grundy County prosecutor to dismiss the charges in the first case but said no one at the company made that request in the recent Wright County case. (When asked for a comment on the matter, Wright County Attorney Eric Simonson noted, “In deference to the court system, our office does not make public comments on the disposition of criminal cases.”)
Regarding last week’s decision, Sorenson said, “We understand the case was dismissed by the Wright County Attorney in the interest of justice due to evidentiary issues. It is important to note in dismissing the case, Judge Derek Johnson upheld the constitutionality of the new law protecting agricultural facilities. The ruling says that trespass is not expressive conduct and, therefore, not protected by the First Amendment. The ruling indicates that the law, on its face, does not treat any type of trespasser differently: ‘Iowa Code § 716.7A(2) does not discriminate on the basis of the viewpoint of the offender. A person who trespasses on a food operation to abuse an animal is treated the same as a person who trespasses on a food operation to rescue one.’ We appreciate and respect Judge Johnson’s decision on this matter.”
For his part, in a press release after the case was dismissed, Johnson stated, “Clearly, the state of Iowa and Iowa Select Farms wanted to avoid massive media coverage of an investigation that exposed the horrifying extermination of these intelligent, emotionally complex animals.”
Though Johnson did not get a day in court, his activist group, Direct Action Everywhere, remained in Wright County throughout last week and raised a few eyebrows. The group staged a protest last Thursday in Belmond in front of Simonson’s office where they said their goal was to prompt the county attorney to prosecute Iowa Select Farms for animal cruelty.
Though temperatures were in the negative digits, the activists held signs and spoke for just under an hour. According to Direct Action’s press release on the matter, “The demonstrators say they’re grateful for yesterday’s dismissal of the charges against Johnson, but say the prosecutor’s job is only half done, and that it’s Iowa Select Farms that should be held accountable for its own allegedly criminal conduct.”
Johnson and the group were reportedly out of the area by Friday and on to other protests at the state capitol in Des Moines.
