Both disappointments & hope for animals on June 2026 court docket

Kevin Antle walks in Virginia,  murder rap reversed in Elijah McClain case,  & animal groups seek  justice for barred owls & bison

RICHMOND, Virginia;  DENVER,  Colorado;  PORTLAND,  Oregon;  MISSOULA,  Montana––“I broke no law.  Not one,”  asserted animal exhibitor Kevin Antle on June 6,  2026,  claiming “Total vindication” after the Virginia Supreme Court dismissed all state charges against him on grounds that a state law forbidding the sale of endangered species does not also stipulate that it is illegal to purchase endangered species.

“The court also threw out Antle’s conspiracy convictions,”  reported TMZ,  “ruling the charges were based in part on conduct that wasn’t actually a crime.

Kevin Antle on June 16,  2023 beat the rap on five state misdemeanor cruelty charges,  as did his two daughters,  Tilakam ”Tilly” Magnolia Watterson,  39,   and Tawny Antle,  31,  but a 12-member Frederick County Circuit Court jury convicted Kevin Antle at the time on four felony counts of trafficking in endangered animals without the proper permits.

These are the convictions now reversed.

Letter of the law is one thing,  intent of the law another

While Antle may not have broken the letter of Virginia state law,  it is difficult to imagine that he did not violate the intent of the law.

“Of course, this isn’t the end of Antle’s legal saga,”  TMZ mentioned.  “The Myrtle Beach Safari owner was sentenced to 12 months in federal prison in July 2025 after admitting to wildlife trafficking and money laundering conspiracy charges involving cheetahs, lions,  tigers,  and a chimpanzee.

Kevin Antle,  who styles himself “Bhagavan,”  on July 8, 2025 drew a much lighter sentence than federal prosecutors asked,  after pleading guilty on November 6,  2023 to federal charges of conspiracy to commit both wildlife trafficking and money laundering.

            (See Kevin Antle, self-styled “Bhagavan” and “Doc,” pleads to federal charges.)

Got one year on federal conviction

“For each count,”  explained a federal Department of Justice media release after the guilty pleas,  “Antle faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison,  a fine of up to $250,000, and three years of supervised release.”

Instead,  Antle was sentenced to one year and one day in prison,  and was fined $55,000.

“Antle “laundered money used in a human smuggling scheme,”  allegedly more than $500,000,  “because he needed large amounts of cash quickly to buy animals like chimpanzees,  lions,  tigers,  cheetahs and other creatures,”  paraphrased Associated Press of prosecutor Patrick Duggan’s summation to the court.

Kevin Antle “was knowingly and illegally trading [endangered species] as part of a black market that drives another black market of poaching and smuggling,” Duggan testified.

Baby-petting

Explained Associated Press,  “Antle’s Myrtle Beach Safari was known for charging hundreds or thousands of dollars to let people pet and hold baby animals like lions, tigers,  and monkeys who were so young they were still being bottle-fed.  Customers would pay $200 for five minutes and photos with a baby chimp or $7,000 for a sleepover.

“The zoo remains open by reservation only.”

“Two of Antle’s employees have already been sentenced for their roles in his schemes,”  Associated Press continued.  “Meredith Bybee was given a year of probation for selling a chimpanzee while Andrew ‘Omar’ Sawyer,  who prosecutors said helped Antle launder money,  was given two years on probation.

“Jason Clay,  a Texas private zoo owner,  pleaded guilty to illegally selling a primate and was sentenced to four months in prison,  while charges were dropped against California ranch owner Charles Sammut,”  Associated Press added.

“Antle will have to give up three chimpanzees he bought as part of his plea deal,”  Associated Press noted.

  (See also Busted again: the secret life of “Tiger King” Kevin “Doc” Antle on the lam from Iowa.)

Elijah McClain case reversal

The Virginia dismissal of charges against Kevin Antle came two days after a Colorado appellate court on June 4,  2026 reversed the homicide convictions of Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec for administering the August 24,  2019 ketamine overdose that allegedly put African-American vegetarian animal advocate Elijah McClain,  23,  into a fatal coma.

McClain died three days later.

Recalled Associated Press,  “McClain’s final words — ‘I can’t breathe’— foreshadowed those of George Floyd a year later in Minneapolis,  and the Colorado man’s name became part of the rallying cries for social justice that swept the United States in 2020.”

The appeals court ordered new trials for Cooper and Cichuniec.

McClain,  almost in front of his home in Aurora,  Colorado,  was “forcibly restrained and put in a neck hold by police, ”  Associated Press summarized,  “who stopped him in response to a suspicious person complaint as the massage therapist walked home from a convenience store” just around the corner.

“Suspicious person” because face was cold

McClain,  who had no criminal history,  was deemed a “suspicious person” by the complainant,  who has never been named in public,  because he was wearing a ski mask and a winter coat on a warm night,  due to anemia which caused him to feel unduly cold.

“A jury in 2023 found Cooper and Cichuniec guilty of criminally negligent homicide following a weekslong trial in state district court,”  Associated Press explained.  “The jurors also found Cichuniec guilty of second-degree felony assault.”

The appeals court upheld that part of Cichuniec’s conviction.

“Cooper avoided prison and was sentenced to 14 months in jail with work release and probation.  Cichuniec received five years in prison,”  Associated Press recounted,  but the sentence was in 2024 reduced to just four years on probation.

Jury instructions

In the June 4,  2026 decision,  “The appeals court agreed with Cooper’s defense team that the lower court ‘misled’ jurors by failing to clarify the standard of care applicable to the charge of criminally negligent homicide,  after jurors asked the court for a definition,”  Associated Press said.

“By telling the jurors to apply the ‘common and ordinary meanings’ of the words in the instruction, the court failed to shine any light on the issue and in fact misled the jurors as to the applicable standard of care,”  the appellate ruling said.

“The proper standard wasn’t that of a generic reasonable person but of a person in Cooper’s profession under the existing circumstances,”  the appellate court ruled.

Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser told ABC News in a prepared statement that his office “is committed to defending these convictions through [further] appeals.  Justice demands it.”

“I’m a vegetarian”

Said McClain in some of his final words,  captured by police body cameras,  “I don’t eat meat.  I’m a vegetarian.”

McClain was known for entertaining cats at a local animal shelter by playing his violin,

Former Aurora police officer Randy Roedema,  found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and assault in the third degree for McClain’s death,  was in January 2026 sentenced to serve 14 months in jail.

Fellow Aurora police officers Jason Rosenblatt and Nathan Woodyard, were found not guilty on charges of reckless manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Rosenblatt was also acquitted on charges of assault in the second degree.

            (See Five tried, 3 convicted for killing vegetarian shelter volunteer Elijah McClain.)

“Barred Owl Management Strategy”

Animal and environmental groups are hoping for a closer semblance of justice in current lawsuits against what the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service calls the “Barred Owl Management Strategy,”  meaning killing as many as 450,000 North American barred owls to keep them from occupying possible northern spotted owl habitat,  and to keep the Bureau of Land Management from evicting bison from grazing land leased by the conservation society American Prairie.

In Portland,  Oregon,  U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson on June 3,  2026 “questioned animal rights organizations on their standing to bring a lawsuit against federal agencies that issued a permit to kill barred owls in the Pacific Northwest,  which they claim violated the Administrative Procedure Act,”  reported Carly Nairn for Courthouse News.

Consolidated case

“In a consolidated case,”  Nairn detailed,  “nonprofits Friends of Animals and Animal Wellness Action said federal agencies issued a special purpose permit to shoot and kill” barred owls in the name of protecting threatened spotted owls.

“Friends of Animals attorney Jennifer Best said the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service issued a special purpose permit for the removal of barred owls in forests throughout Washington,  Oregon and Northern California at night away from human activity, because the agency couldn’t meet the regulations necessary under a general depredation permit, which includes the restriction not to lure or call the owls into shooting range,”  Nairn summarized.

Best also argued that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service “use of the term ‘invasive species’ for barred owls doesn’t meet the legal definition under an executive order,  as barred owls didn’t migrate to the west due to direct human action,  and their range naturally expanded over decades.”

Blogged Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle,  “The ‘Barred Owl Management Strategy’ is cast by its architects as a regrettable rescue mission for the threatened northern spotted owl:  shooting one forest owl to save a different forest owl.

“Cover for the timber industry”

“But it turns out that the barred owl killing plan amounts to a thinly veiled cover for the timber industry to vastly expand the annual cut of timber in the verdant forests of the Pacific Northwest over the next eight years,  putting both species of owls in the crosshairs.

“The bottom line: dramatically expanded timber-cutting in Pacific Northwest forests only happens if the ‘Barred Owl Management Strategy’ survives our legal challenge.

“Under the direction of Interior Secretary Doug Burghum,”  Pacelle wrote,  “the plan will enable logging in spotted owl habitats,  with Section 50301 of H.R. 1,  the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act,’  driving timber cutting on national forests and Bureau of Land Management areas in the West — with the goal of increasing annual harvest by 60%, from 3 billion board feet to 5 billion board feet.

“Nixing the ‘Barred Owl Management Strategy,'”  Pacelle said,  “will prevent the shooting of barred owls in 14 national parks and it will prevent a timber-industry assault on threatened spotted owls and their habitats,  too.  It will also rein in an expansive use of the Endangered Species Act that lawmakers never intended.”

BLM doesn’t want bison to roam on leased land

Five days later,  on June 8, 2026,  “the Western Watersheds Project,  represented by the Western Environmental Law Center,”  filing in federal court in Missoula,  Montana,  “appealed a decision by the Bureau of Land Management to revoke American Prairie’s authority to graze bison on public lands in northeastern Montana,”  announced Western Watersheds Project attorney Erik Molvar and Western Environmental Law Center attorney Pete Frost in a joint media release.

The Bureau of Land Management “issued the bison permits in 2022,”  the joint media release recounted,  “after completing a multi-year environmental review finding that bison grazing is permissible on public lands and in fact would be better for prairie grasslands than cattle.

“Now,  in a politically motivated reversal,  over the course of just five months,”  Molvar and Frost alleged,  “the agency decided to rescind the bison permits under a brand new theory that a livestock owner must be a ‘production-oriented’ entity,  and did so without defining what that means.

Bison were authorized to graze in 2022

“In 2022,”  Molvar and Frost explained,  the Bureau of Land Management decided that reading a ‘production’ requirement into federal law ‘would read words and requirements’ into the law that don’t exist.  Instead,  at that time,  BLM said it can ‘issue permits to any stock owner.'”

That Bureau of Land Management decision “found that privately-owned bison are domestic livestock under the Taylor Grazing Act,  the Federal Land Policy & Management Act,  and the Multiple-Use Sustained Yield Act—a conclusion consistent with Montana state law, which consistently treated American Prairie’s bison herd as ‘livestock,’  by levying taxes and imposing disease testing requirements. Indeed, the U.S. Forest Service defines livestock under the Taylor Grazing Act as ‘…animals of any kind kept or raised for [any] use or pleasure,'”  Molvar and Frost recounted.

Trump appointees reversed 2022 decision

However,  the media release noted,  “The 2022 bison grazing decision was appealed by ranching groups represented by Karen Budd-Falen—now one of the highest ranking officials at the Department of Interior.”

Interior Secretary Burgum,  allege Molvar and Frost,  “personally intervened to direct the Bureau of Land Management to reconsider,  ultimately producing the outcome Budd-Falen’s former clients sought.

“The permit revocation,”  the Western Environmental Law Center and Western Watersheds Project charge,  “is the first step in a broader effort to lock cattle and sheep interests into permanent dominance over public lands grazing.

“Just days following the decision, the agency released proposed grazing regulations containing the same ‘production-oriented’ requirement.  If finalized,  those rules would frustrate and obstruct the restoration of bison on public lands on 155 million acres across the western U.S.,”  the Western Environmental Law Center and Western Watersheds allege.

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