Taxpayer cost to prosecute Wisconsin dog advocates could be millions, attorney says

It might cost as much as $5 million to prosecute about 50 animal rights activists who attempted to take beagles from a now-defunct Wisconsin breeder accused of abusing them, according to an attorney who was among those arrested. By contrast, the dog breeder, Ridglan Farms, struck a deal and avoided criminal charges. The disparity in prosecution has perplexed the arrested activists and their supporters who argue that Ridglan would still be breeding thousands of beagles each year without their advocacy, and that the attempted rescues that led to the charges wouldn't have been necessary had law enforcement acted sooner. "The district attorney, if he had spent just a fraction of the time that he has now spent investigating and charging and trying to prosecute rescuers, investigating Ridglan Farms (instead), all of this could have been avoided," said Steffen Seitz, a litigation fellow for the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, which is representing at least one of the activists in court. "Thousands of dogs wouldn't have been subjected to unnecessary suffering. Extreme amounts of taxpayer money would have been saved. People would not be going through the really anxiety-inducing process of being charged and going to trial." Abuse allegations Ridglan was among the biggest beagle breeders for research experiments in the country and had faced abuse allegations for years by animal rights activists. After law enforcement officers didn't act, the activists sought to compel prosecution in court. In early 2025, a judge agreed there was evidence to support animal cruelty charges against Ridglan and that the Dane County "district attorney has failed to issue a complaint or commence an investigation into Ridglan's conduct," court records show. Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne's office did not respond to repeated requests to comment for this article. The judge ordered the appointment of a special prosecutor – a district attorney from a different county – who later last year agreed to withhold criminal charges against Ridglan if it stopped breeding the dogs and relinquished those that remained by July 1, 2026. The special prosecutor, La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke, wrote in a report to the judge that the agreement was "the best resolution available" because it resulted in the closure of Ridglan "without the expense and uncertainty of a prosecution" for felony mistreatment of animals. Gruenke did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Ridglan could not be reached to comment for this article. Its website says: "No credible evidence of animal abuse, cruelty, mistreatment or neglect at Ridglan Farms has ever been presented or substantiated." No anesthesia The special prosecutor's investigation found that Ridglan had routinely and wrongly delegated surgeries to unqualified workers who didn't use anesthesia. Those surgeries were meant to rectify a somewhat common problem among young beagles called "cherry eye" – when an eye gland dislodges and becomes exposed. Contemporary veterinarian guidance says the gland should be tucked back into place, but Ridglan opted to cut it off, court records show. Removing the gland can cause chronic dry eye. Former Ridglan employees testified that the surgeries were done without anesthesia, pain medication or attempts to contain bleeding. They said other dogs would lick the blood from those that underwent the surgeries. A veterinarian testified that the dogs likely experienced significant pain. Former employees also alleged that Ridglan had deliberately mutilated the dogs' vocal cords to quiet their barks, but the special prosecutor had no evidence it had happened within the past six years so that it could be prosecuted. Seitz, the attorney who is representing activists, said beagles are often preferred for breeding for research because they are docile. "They've been chosen, over time, because basically you can abuse a beagle and they'll trust you again and come back to you," Seitz said. Felony charges Despite the agreement for Ridglan to stop breeding, the activists staged two public attempts to retrieve dogs from the site in March and April, according to court records. In the first instance, more than 50 people broke into the site, which is about 20 miles west of Madison. Some wore white suits. They took more than a dozen dogs before law enforcement officials intervened. In April, hundreds of activists went to the site, but no dogs were taken. The event was well-publicized, and law enforcement officers were ready. Liam Gray, executive director of the Wilberforce Institute, was among those who attended the April event. He told The Center Square that he and other activists were quickly met with tear gas and rubber bullets. "Spending endless taxpayer dollars to try to arrest people for trying to help dogs, I think, is a pretty crazy prospect," Gray said. Elise Schaffer, public information officer for the Dane County Sheriff's Office, which led the law-enforcement response that included multiple agencies, did not respond to a request to reveal what the office spent to quell the attempted rescues and to investigate for crimes. Ridglan has shared surveillance video recordings from the April incident that shows someone driving a sport-utility vehicle through the site's main gate and another person stealing a baton from a law officer who was arresting someone else. This month the Dane County District Attorney's Office filed felony burglary and theft charges against about four dozen people the sheriff's office suspected had participated in the March break-in. The burglary charges are punishable by up to 12 1/2 years in prison. "Claims that the (Dane County Sheriff's Office) is 'protecting animal cruelty' or acting with bias are inaccurate," the sheriff's office posted on its webpage about the Ridglan situation. "The DCSO enforces laws as written and operates within clearly defined legal boundaries." It's unclear whether a similar barrage of criminal charges are planned for the April incident. Ridglan blames Wayne Hsiung for instigating the break-ins. He was accused of burglary and theft at the site nearly a decade ago, but the charges were dismissed at Ridglan's request. Ridglan said it made the request "after receiving numerous threats. "The fault lies squarely on the shoulders of Wayne Hsiung, who organized, egged on and then led hundreds of individuals in a coordinated, violent assault on our facility," according to a Ridglan statement on its website about the April incident. "Instead of respecting the rule of law and the results of a thorough investigation which led to a binding legal agreement between the state of Wisconsin and Ridglan Farms, Mr. Hsiung decided to encourage lawlessness and vigilantism because he did not personally agree with the results of the legal process." 'Horrific conditions' Gray, of the Wilberforce Institute, said he and others were compelled to go to Ridglan despite its July deadline to remove all dogs because they feared abuse was ongoing. "These dogs were still under really, truly criminal and horrific conditions that weren't going to cease anytime soon, and so I think it became kind of a necessary thing, like, the dogs needed to be rescued, they were being hurt, actively being hurt," Gray said. Hsiung declined to be interviewed for this article, but he estimated the cost to prosecute each person would exceed $100,000. "The attorney time alone is very expensive," he told The Center Square in an email. Hsiung is an attorney who is defending himself in court. The Dane County District Attorney's Office did not respond to a question about whether Hsiung's estimate is right. Seitz, the attorney who is representing other defendants, said he could not provide an accurate estimate of the costs but that many of those who have been charged want to take their cases to trial. Federal surveys have shown that the average cost for a felony prosecution in populous counties is less than $10,000, but less than 5 percent of the cases go to trial, which can be significantly more expensive. Appeals can also add to the costs. "There's a lot of people who are very eager to go to trial who believe that what they did was not only morally right but legally right and want to have their day in court and defend it," Seitz said of the Ridglan defendants. He said they can argue they had a right to intervene to protect the dogs from an ongoing, unsafe situation. "We're all familiar with the idea of a dog trapped in a hot car," Seitz said. "I can't ordinarily go around breaking windows, but if there's a dog or a child in the back of a car who's overheating, then I can take emergency action and break someone's window and save that dog or that child." Hsiung's trial is set to begin in January 2027 and is scheduled to go for two weeks, according to court records.