WINTON - Two employees for an animal rights group were cleared Friday of charges that they cruelly killed cats and dogs.

What they got were littering convictions -- for throwing out the dead animals.

After a two-week trial that caused a sensation in rural northeastern North Carolina, a jury acquitted Andrew B. Cook and Adria J. Hinkle of eight counts of animal cruelty. Cook and Hinkle work for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, based in Norfolk, Va. Hinkle also was found not guilty of three felony counts of lying to get cats from a veterinarian's office.

But they were found guilty of throwing euthanized animals into a Dumpster behind a Piggly Wiggly grocery. The PETA employees said the dead animals had begun to smell during the ride back to Norfolk.

Hinkle, 28, a Missouri native who co-workers say plans to devote her life to caring for animals, sobbed as the verdict was read. Had the two been convicted of cruelty, neither she nor Cook, 26, would have been permitted to work in shelters.

Hinkle declined to comment except to tell a crush of television cameramen and onlookers, "Justice was served." Cook left without speaking to reporters.

Each will pay about $4,000 in fines and restitution and be on supervised probation for one year.

The pair were arrested in June 2005 after police staked out a Dumpster where dead cats and dogs had been found for several Wednesdays in a row. Police saw Hinkle and Cook throwing away animals they had collected from the Bertie County animal shelter and a Hertford County veterinarian's office and euthanized in the back of their van.

Unwanted attention

The charges brought national attention to PETA's practice of euthanizing thousands of stray animals every year. The case was startling, given the organization's opposition to meat eating, animal research or any other human use of animals. PETA often drives home its points by displaying naked women in cages, throwing blood on fur wearers or showing gory videos outside circuses.

The trial, which lasted as long as some capital murder cases, centered on a key question: Did PETA tell county officials and veterinarians who handed over strays that they would be immediately euthanized? Or did PETA promise to try to find them homes, but then kill them in the back of the van?

Gushing over puppies

In closing arguments Friday, prosecutor Valerie Asbell painted Hinkle as a liar who gushed over kittens and puppies, promised to find them homes and then gave them lethal injections beside secluded country roads.

Cook, both sides agreed, was a new PETA employee just helping Hinkle for the day.

Employees of an Ahoskie veterinarian testified that Hinkle had asked whether a mother cat and two kittens had names, and promised everyone in the office, including a 9-year-old girl, that she would find them homes. She euthanized them a few minutes after leaving the office.

A Bertie County animal control officer testified that Hinkle said she would have "no problem" finding homes for two dalmatians named Annie and Toby. The dogs were dead before they left the shelter's parking lot.

The same officer said he handed over his own dog, a terrier named Happy, because he had had trouble housebreaking it. Hinkle sent him a picture of the dog in a garden, standing in front of a house but didn't mention that the dog had been euthanized upon arriving at PETA headquarters.

"They go out and say, 'Oh, we helped all these animals,'" said Asbell, who is the district attorney for Hertford, Bertie and Northampton counties. "They sure aren't out telling folks they're killing healthy ones ... because that doesn't go along with the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals."

Jurors apparently agreed with defense lawyers, who said PETA workers euthanized the animals to spare them from suffering.

'It's our problem'

Hinkle and Cook, lawyer Jack Warmack argued, were doing the dirty work that others couldn't face: giving peaceful deaths to the legions of animals that North Carolina residents abandon each year.

"We're to blame," Warmack said. "It's our problem."

Three defense lawyers said PETA had made no secret of its plans for the animals. On several occasions, the lawyers said, shelter employees watched Hinkle give animals injections.

The defense team said local residents lied about their beliefs that PETA was finding homes for animals, for fear of public outrage.

"Everybody knew," Washington lawyer Blair Brown told jurors. "PETA kills animals."

The idea that homes could have been found for the animals, the lawyers argued, was silly. The animals came from a shelter where disease was rampant. Some were aggressive. Even for healthy animals, there aren't enough homes, the defense lawyers said.

PETA began sending workers to the Bertie County animal shelter in 2000, when a police officer called the group to complain about shelter conditions.

A dog-eat-cat shelter

Jurors saw photos Friday of the shelter at that time. The enclosure had no roof, and dogs floated in flooded cages. Another dog feasted on a dead cat.

Over the years, PETA workers picked up animals with infected gashes, tumors, even bullet wounds that were left untreated, defense lawyers said, showing graphic pictures.

The lawyers said PETA agreed to take animals to save them from terrifying deaths in gas chambers. The animals were killed instead with shots of sodium pentobarbital, which most vets use.

The defense also argued that law enforcement officials were more concerned with making a dramatic arrest involving a controversial group than with protecting animals.

After the verdict was announced late Friday, PETA officials said they would return to their work, trying to protect animals in northeastern North Carolina. They said they would even be willing to take over euthanizations again.

Daphna Nachminovitch of PETA said that Hinkle and Cook should not have thrown animals in the Dumpster but that their intentions were good.

Of the cruelty charges, Nachminovitch said, "All along, it was nothing but a big, big, sad mistake."