NATION : Animal Rights Activist Bars Plea

An animal rights activist turned down a plea bargain that would have allowed her to serve only one year in prison on a charge of attempted murder because the agreement did not include visits with her dogs.

Fran Trutt, who is charged with attempted murder, possession of explosives and bomb manufacturing, will go to trial for planting a bomb at a company that demonstrates surgical staples on dogs in 1988. She faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

“She was willing to allow herself to be incarcerated for a crime she did not commit in order to see her dogs immediately,” John Williams, Trutt’s lawyer, said. “She would do anything to see her dogs. The only thing you could compare it with is a mother seeing a child.”

Trutt is being held at Connecticut Correctional Institution in Niantic on $500,000 bond and has not seen her dogs since her arrest in November, 1988. She is accused of planting a remote-controlled pipe bomb near the corporate parking space of Leon Hirsch, president of U.S. Surgical in Norwalk.