Was Wayne Hsiung acquitted or convicted this week? [closed]

Question

Or has the jury not yet returned a verdict? Note: as stated in title, this question is asking about the case that hit a jury this week.

Answer 1

Short Answer

A jury is currently deliberating on misdemeanor trespass charges and felony conspiracy to trespass charges against Wayne Hsiung in a Sonoma County, California court in Santa Rosa, California, in which Wayne Hsiung represented himself without an attorney.

This is most likely the case referred to in the question, although it is not an exact match to the description of the case in the question.

Long Answer

Wayne Hsiung was convicted of criminal charges for his animal activism on December 6, 2018 in Pennsylvania.

According to the New York Times, Wayne Hsiung was acquitted on Saturday, October 8, 2022 in a Utah case related to animal rights activism in which jury selection was underway as of September 30, 2022.

Wayne Hsiung has also been a defendant in other criminal cases related to his animal activism in his life.

The question doesn't clearly identify another case pending against him which made it difficult to figure out what it was referring to.

The most likely possibility, although it is guesswork necessitated by the lack of specificity is that this question, is that the question could be about a criminal trial conducted in Santa Rosa, California arising out of animal activism incidents associated with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) that took place in 2018 and 2019, against Defendants Cassandra King, Priya Sawhney, and Wayne Hsiung.

Charges were dropped against Cassandra King and Priya Sawhney accepted a plea bargain, before the trial started in that case. It isn't a case that has been resolved already, however, as the question indicated.

This trial was scheduled to start September 8, 2023, and expected to last two weeks, or possibly longer, as of May 31, 2023. As of September 6, 2023 that trial was on schedule and subject to a gag order:

Activists affiliated with animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, are now facing trespassing and conspiracy to commit trespassing charges for their actions at Sunrise Farms and Reichardt Duck Farm in 2018 and 2019.

Defendants Cassandra King, Wayne Hsiung and Priya Sawhney have recently received adjusted charges, according to DxE press coordinator Alison Barnard. Their trial will begin Sept. 8 at the Santa Rosa Courthouse.

In the defendants’ pre-trial readiness hearing Sept. 1, Deputy District Attorney Robert Waner amended their charges, Barnard said, eliminating previous burglary and theft charges. Hsiung and Sawhney now face two counts of felony conspiracy to commit trespass and two counts of misdemeanor trespass. King faces these same charges but all as misdemeanors.

As noted here:

Former defendant Cassandra King had all charges against her dropped Sept. 8.

This Sonoma County, California case was continued to September 25, 2023 as of September 20, 2023, and was expected to last two weeks or more, after the trial judge's gag order was upheld on appeal.

As of October 5, 2023, when opening arguments began in that case, one source reported that:

An animal activist who participated in two protests at poultry farms near Petaluma more than four years ago told a Sonoma County jury Thursday he had good intentions and believed he wasn’t committing a crime when he tried to rescue the chickens and ducks he believed were being mistreated.

Wayne Hsiung, who is representing himself, delivered his opening statements to the jury of eight women and four men in Sonoma County Superior Court in Santa Rosa. He is charged with two felony counts of trespassing and two felony counts of conspiracy.

If convicted as charged he could be sentenced to as much as three years and eight months in prison, according to the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office.

The case, which is being overseen by Judge Laura Passaglia, stems from protests by animal activists that were held at two locations in Petaluma: Sunrise Farms on May 29, 2018, and Reichardt Duck Farm on June 3, 2019.

As of October 6, 2023, another source reported that:

Hsiung is now the only person on trial in this case after charges were dropped or plea deals were accepted regarding all the other co-defendants. He faces trespass and conspiracy to trespass as a lead organizer in the open rescues of 70 chickens and ducks from three different factory farms in Sonoma County, California between 2018 and 2019. Because of these actions, numerous animal rights activists, who claim they had the legal right to rescue suffering animals, were initially arrested for these rescues, but only a handful were prosecuted.

Closing statements were presented to the jury in this Sonoma County, California case yesterday, on October 24, 2023. The jury was deliberating in this case today (October 25, 2023). The jury did not announce that it had reached a verdict in the case today.

This jury will continue to deliberate until it reaches a verdict, or until the jurors reach a deadlock and a mistrial is declared. Deliberations of multiple days are typical in felony criminal jury trials, so there is no indication so far that a mistrial is likely.