— ANALYSIS —
Habeas Corpus, the “great writ” that incarcerated people can use to get out of jail, is used by immigration lawyers working to keep foreign nationals who’ve landed in the United States from being detained or deported.
But Habeas Corpus comes with one drawback. There is no time clock. Judges are not required to make timely decisions or any decision at all. No Habeas Corpus petitions illustrate that point better than Stewart Parnell v. United States and Michael Parnell v United States. Their cases do not involve foreign nationals, but food safety, or lack thereof.
Stewart Parnell, the former president of Peanut Corporation of America, is serving the longest criminal sentence ever in a food safety case — 28 years. His brother, Michael Parnell, is not far behind with a 20-year sentence. Both were convicted by a jury trial 11 years ago, actions associated with a 17-year-old multi-state Salmonella outbreak that sickened more than 700 and resulted in nine deaths.
The charges that brought them down were conspiracy to defraud their customers by shipping salmonella-positive peanut products. They were also sentenced for falsifying microbiological test results. Their tainted peanut butter led to the outbreak.
The six-year-old Parnell Habeas Corpus petitions were finally consolidated and heard in oral arguments on Sept. 26, 2024, before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta.
More than six months later, there has been no ruling
That panel, consisting of Chief Judge William H. Pryor Jr., Judge Robert J. Luck, and Senior Judge Edward Earl Carnes, has remained silent about what they heard during those oral arguments.
Many Habeas Corpus petitions are often filed pro se, meaning on one’s behalf without the benefit of an attorney, and often by “jailhouse lawyers.” That’s not the case for the Parnell petitions.
Professional attorneys handled the pleadings and oral arguments. Stewart Parnell is represented by Amy Lee Copeland of Savannah, GA, and Michael Parnell’s attorney is Elliott Harding of Charlottesville, VA.
Neither wanted to comment on the pending cases but confirmed that nothing new has occurred since the oral arguments in Atlanta last year.
Because they are elderly and incarcerated, Stewart, 70, and Michael, 65, are likely having a hard time keeping their hope alive with the slow process. Their petitions challenge their convictions and sentences, but they remain federal inmates at the same Butner, NC, federal prison known as “Butner Low.” It is a low-security facility for less than 1,000 inmates.
Stewart and Michael are brothers. They were the top executives and peanut brokers for the now-defunct Peanut Corporation of America (PCA). A 2014 jury trial convicted them of multiple felonies related to a 2008 multiple-state Salmonella outbreak caused by PCA peanut butter and paste produced by their Georgia plant.
They were sentenced in 2015—Stewart to 28 years and Michael to 20 years. Parole is not an option in the federal system, but a “good time” credit is possible. “Good time” means the Parnell brothers will each get up to five years off their original sentences.
The federal Bureau of Prisons will release Michael in 2031 and Stewart in 2038.
Although nine deaths were associated with that salmonella outbreak, the brothers were not charged with any murder or manslaughter. The prosecution agreed with defense attorneys not to even mention the deaths during the 34-day jury trial.
But some jurors did bring up the deaths during deliberations, and the defense sought a new trial. The trial judge held two sealed hearings to question the jurors, but ruled no misconduct occurred. The issue delayed sentencing to 2015. The re-trial motion was denied.
The convictions and sentences were upheld on direct appeal to the 11th Circuit. Multiple counts of mail and wire fraud and conspiracy for putting adulterated and misbranded food into interstate commerce with the intent to defraud or mislead ended with sentences on par with many a murder conviction.
Stewart and Michael filed separate Habeas Corpus petitions in 2019, which were twice brought together for hearings. The first was in May 2021, when Magistrate Judge Thomas Langstaff, since retired, held a two-day evidentiary hearing at the U.S. District Courthouse in Albany, GA, where the trial occurred seven years earlier.
Stewart and Michael attended the evidentiary hearing in their prison jumpsuits and under guard.
Although they got their evidentiary hearings, the Parnell petitions did not set any speed records at the District Court.
The Magistrate judge took from 2019 to 2022 to hold the evidentiary hearing for the record and recommend to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia to deny both motions.
Judge W. Louis Sands accepted and adopted the Magistrate’s findings on Sept. 23, 2022. Sands is of senior status in Georgia’s middle district. He was the trial judge for the 2014 Peanut Corporation of America criminal cases.
A Habeas Corpus appeal to the circuit court requires a “certificate of appealability.” Sands was not handling those because he said no denial of a constitutional right had been shown.
But after being denied by Sands, the attorneys for the Parnell brothers did file appeals with the higher court, and U.S. Circuit Judge Andrew L. Basher granted “appealability” that, in part, would end up for both petitions. Attorneys Copeland and Harding would end up sparring with the U.S. Department of Justice over these issues:
Whether the District Court erred in determining that Parnell could not establish a presumption of jury prejudice based on adverse pretrial publicity, and whether a showing of presumed jury prejudice operates to establish both prongs of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim based on counsel’s failure to move for a change in the venue.”
These “appealability” issues had to be addressed under Skilling v. United States, the 2010 Supreme Court case involving the conviction appeal of former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling.
With no ruling from the Appellate Court in Atlanta, the last words on the Parnell petitions remain those two back-to-back oral arguments from last Sept.26. The three-judge panel was filled with questions about how the petitions fit into the precedents of Skilling and a half dozen other previous court cases.
For that three-judge panel, former President George W. Bush appointed Chief Justice Pryor and Senior Judge Carnes to the 11th Circuit, and President Donald J. Trump named Judge Luck.
Stewart Parnell’s attorney, Copeland, argued that a “documents case” had turned into a “death case,” meaning that her client was denied a fair trial by a fair and impartial jury. Harding, Michael Parnell’s attorney, said the “death issue” should never have touched his client because he dealt only with Kellogg’s, and its products were not involved in outbreak cases.
DOJ’s Stewart E. Walker had the opportunity to respond to the Parnell attorneys. He questioned how the 2014 jury could be considered “biased” when it acquitted Michael Parnell on 30 percent of the charges the government brought against him. Stewart Parnell was acquitted on only one charge.
Walker was not on the DOJ team that convicted the brothers, but he’s been assigned to oppose their petitions to the Parnell argument that the jury trial should have been moved out of Albany, GA. Walker points out that the defense attorneys for Parnell at the trial had 77 years of trial experience and did not ask for a change of venue. Those attorneys all testified at the 2021 evidentiary hearing and said they preferred a rural jury in Albany to an urban jury in Atlanta.
Somewhere, there is probably a story about a quick Habeas Corpus decision. This isn’t it. The Parnell brothers must continue to wait.
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