Biography
Andrew Stepanian is an American animal rights activist and one of the SHAC 7 defendants who was convicted in 2006 for his role in the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaign. Stepanian served as the New York coordinator for SHAC USA and, like the other members of the group, was convicted under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act and related charges. He served approximately 31 months in federal prison, including time in the isolated Communication Management Unit — a highly restrictive section of the Bureau of Prisons — before his release.
March2006 verdict and pre-sentencing status
Page7 names Andrew Stepanian among the six individual SHAC defendants convicted on March2,2006. It explains that the original group also included JohnMcGee, whose case was dropped, and SHACUSA as an organizational defendant. The article says the six were under house arrest awaiting sentencing at publication. House arrest is not converted to prison time. The expected June sentencing and possible sentence ranges were future projections, not the actual later sentencing or jail-admission dates. The May26,2004 date is described as indictment, not individually proved physical arrest or intake.
The Warrior Wind, issue2, mid-April2006, an advocacy newsletter; source claims and completed custody events are distinguished.
Federal custody dates and halfway-house transition
In his signed June 25, 2020 declaration, Andrew Stepanian states that he surrendered to the U.S. Marshals Service on October 3, 2006 and was taken to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. This physical admission is distinct from the September sentencing date previously copied into the admission field. He describes subsequent Butner custody, transfer to Marion’s Communications Management Unit in early summer 2008, and departure from that unit in mid-December 2008 with two days to report to a Brooklyn halfway house. The official Federal Bureau of Prisons locator, queried by his exact register number 26399-050, identifies ANDREW STEPANIAN and gives an actual release date of May 6, 2009, not the previously stored May 5. The elapsed interval from October 3, 2006 to May 6, 2009 is 946 days of federal custody, including the documented halfway-house phase; it is not a claim that all 946 days were spent inside a closed prison. Final BOP discharge does not mean the end of supervision. No precise halfway-house transfer or reporting day is inferred from the declaration’s mid-December wording. Its retrospective reference to a February 2006 conviction does not replace the separately documented contemporaneous March 2 verdict.
Declaration of Andrew Stepanian, filed June 26, 2020: PDF page 2; PDF page 3; PDF page 9. Federal Bureau of Prisons locator, exact register 26399-050, actual-release result retrieved October 23, 2026.
The prosecution’s May 22, 2006 post-trial memorandum dates the superseding SHAC indictment to September 16, 2004 and the jury verdict to March 2, 2006. It records an initial trial opening on June 6, 2005, followed by a defense-requested mistrial after counsel Isabel McGinty became ill, and a new trial beginning February 6, 2006. The brief was signed by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Charles B. McKenna and Ricardo Solano Jr. Its arguments that the evidence was sufficient and that the trial was fair are the prosecution’s position, not a judicial ruling on the defendants’ post-trial motions.
Animal People reported in March 2002 that Stepanian had previously served three months in jail in a fur-store case. It separately reported a February 25 six-month sentence for resisting arrest and obstruction.
On October 14, 2009, the Third Circuit affirmed the SHAC convictions and sentences, remanding only to establish a restitution payment schedule.
