A lawyer seeking to free two chimpanzees from a state university told a judge Wednesday that their confinement for research purposes is akin to slavery, the involuntary detention of mentally ill people and imprisonment. Steven Wise, an attorney with the Nonhuman Rights Project, told Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Barbara Jaffe in a nearly two-hour hearing that Hercules and Leo are "autonomous and self-determining beings" who should be granted a writ of habeas corpus and be moved from Stony Brook University on Long Island to a sanctuary in Florida. "They're essentially in solitary confinement," Wise told the judge before a crowd of about 100 people packed into the Manhattan courthouse's ceremonial courtroom. "This is what we do to the worst human criminal."
