A recently released documentary short, titled “Unjustified: The Unchecked Power of America’s Justice System,” focuses on the fallout from a 2008 immigration raid on a kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa. Former Agriprocessors executive Sholom Rubashkin was later charged with numerous violations, including violating child labor laws, identity theft and bank fraud. He was convicted on 86 financial fraud counts and sentenced to 27 years in prison, and his case has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The documentary was apparently directed by an Emmy-nominated producer who has worked on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” and Michael Moore’s Bravo TV series “The Awful Truth.” Additional information about Rubashkin’s case appears in Issue 439 of this Update. See The Des Moines Register, September 19, 2012.
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The manager of an Iowa egg farm that recalled 550 million eggs in a 2010 Salmonella outbreak that may have sickened 2,000 people has reportedly entered a guilty plea to a charge of conspiring to bribe a public official to allow the sale of eggs that failed to meet federal standards. United States v. Wasmund, No. 12-3041 (N.D. Iowa, plea entered September 12, 2012). According to Tony Wasmund’s attorney, the former manager, who oversaw some of the enterprises owned by Jack DeCoster, is cooperating with government authorities. The indictment charged Wasmund with authorizing the use of $300 in petty cash to be used by a colleague to bribe a U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector assigned to DeCoster’s Wright County egg farm. The bribe was purportedly intended to persuade the inspector to approve the sale of shell eggs that had been withheld for falling short of applicable USDA standards. Prosecutors apparently refused…
Sholom Rubashkin, who managed a kosher meatpacking facility in Postville, Iowa, and was convicted on 86 counts related to financial fraud, lost the appeal of his conviction and the 324-month prison sentence imposed by a federal district court. United States v. Rubashkin, Nos. 10-2487/3580 (8th Cir., decided September 16, 2011). Additional details about the case appear in Issue 378 of this Update. Among other matters, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that evidence indicating that the trial court judge met with prosecutors before the facility was raided by immigration officials was insufficient to show bias against Rubashkin or that “the district court’s decision to remain on the case prejudiced Rubashkin’s verdict.” The court also found no fault in the trial court severing the bank fraud charges from the immigration law violations, which the government later dismissed, and trying the bank fraud charges first. According to the appeals court, “Given…
The U.S. Senate has approved a bill (S. 216) designed to “strengthen criminal penalties for companies that knowingly violate food safety standards and place tainted food products on the market,” according to the legislation’s sponsor, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). The proposal would increase offenses from a misdemeanor to a felony, establish fines and give law enforcement the ability to seek prison sentences of up to 10 years. See Press Release of Senator Patrick Leahy, April 15, 2011.
“When Aubert de Villaine received an anonymous note, in January 2010, threatening the destruction of his priceless heritage unless he paid a one-million-euro ransom, he thought it was a sick joke,” writes Maximillian Potter in this May 2011 Vanity Fair article chronicling “an unprecedented and decidedly un-French” plan to poison the world’s most famous vineyard, La Romanée-Conti. Considered the Holy Grail of Burgundy, the eponymous wines produced by this 4.46-acre, centuries-old vineyard currently sell for $6,455 per bottle, with 1945 vintages fetching upward of $38,000 per bottle. According to Potter, it was only a few months before a record-setting auction of Romanée-Conti that “word of the attack began seeping into the world beyond Burgundy,” which has since sought to keep the affair quiet. Potter traces the remarkable crime from early 2010, when vineyard owner de Villaine began receiving anonymous ransom demands in the mail, to the arrest of a career…
According to the Department of Justice, a Massachusetts-based fish packer has been convicted of several criminal charges for falsely labeling packages of frozen fish fillets. A federal jury in Boston found Stephen Delaney guilty of a felony violation of the Lacey Act for falsely labeling $8,000 worth of frozen pollock, a product of China, as more expensive cod loins, a product of Canada. The jury also convicted Delaney of one misdemeanor violation for misbranding food under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act; he allegedly placed into interstate commerce $203,000 worth of Chinese frozen fish fillets falsely labeled as products of Canada, Holland, Namibia, and the United States. Evidence at trial apparently indicated that he also changed 4 oz. labels on some packages to 5 oz. labels. Delaney will be sentenced on June 8, 2011; he faces up to six years in jail and up to $350,000 in fines. See Department of…
The Senate Judiciary Committee has sent to the Senate a food safety crime bill (S. 216). Designed to “strengthen criminal penalties for companies that knowingly violate food safety standards and place tainted food products on the market,” the legislation would increase offenses from a misdemeanor to a felony, establish fines and give law enforcement the ability to seek prison sentences of up to 10 years. “The fines and recalls that usually result from criminal violations under current law fall short in protecting the public from harmful products,” Leahy said in a statement. Details of the Food Safety Accountability Act, first proposed in summer 2010 by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and reintroduced in January, appear in Issue 380 of this Update. See Press Release of Senator Patrick Leahy, March 31, 2011.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has requested that Attorney General Eric Holder provide an update on the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the 2009 Salmonella outbreak involving contaminated peanuts from Peanut Corp. of America (PCA) facilities. As Leahy reminds Holder in his February 22, 2011, letter, the outbreak was linked to the deaths of nine people and purportedly sickened more than 700 others. He also cites his previous request that the department conduct “a full criminal investigation into this matter.” PCA declared bankruptcy in 2009, and neither its former CEO nor other executives have been charged to date. According to Leahy, “Given the PCA investigation, the pistachio recall, and last summer’s salmonella outbreak from eggs, my concerns remain that wrongdoers are disregarding the health and safety of American consumers by choosing to sell contaminated products. I hope that there has been a thorough criminal investigation into PCA’s conduct at the least,…
According to a news source, the families of those who died or became ill from consuming Salmonella-tainted peanut products scheduled a February 11, 2011, press conference to call for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to bring criminal charges against the man who headed the bankrupt Peanut Corp. of America, to which the contamination was allegedly traced. More than 700 people were said to have experienced ill effects during the 2008-2009 outbreak and at least nine died. Former Peanut Corp. CEO Stewart Parnell invoked the Fifth Amendment when called to testify before Congress, and, despite a two-year investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office, no charges have yet been filed. The press conference coincided with a food safety seminar at the American University Washington College of Law at which some of the family members were scheduled to speak along with plaintiffs’ lawyer William Marler, who has represented a number of those allegedly…
According to a news source, a prosecutor in Florida appears willing to accept an insanity defense in the case of a man who murdered his father while depressed, sleep-deprived and under the purported influence of an energy drink. A psychiatrist reportedly testified during a bond reduction hearing that defendant Stephen Coffeen, who allegedly smothered his father in 2009, suffered a “psychotic break” that was “accelerated by his use of Red Bull.” The defendant’s brother, Thomas Coffeen, is apparently skeptical about the defense, writing to the court, “since when is being tired, and high on an energy drink, an excuse for cold blooded murder, anyway?” The court has denied bond and set another hearing in the case for February 17, 2011. See St. Petersburg Times, February 7, 2011.
