Rubashkin Trial Day 5: Afternoon Summary
Rubashkin trial: Week one concludes
BLOG POST BY JENS KROGSTAD • Des Moines Register4:11 p.m., Waterloo, Ia. — Court is adjourned until Monday at 9 a.m.
Some highlights from the last two witnesses of the day:
Floriberta Valenzo Morales said Agriprocessors rejected her application because they did not believe she was 18.
The kosher slaughterhouse only hired her when her mother produced a birth certificate that matched her false documents.
She used scissors to process poultry. A co-worker told her she looked like one of her 15-year-old daughters, she said. Morales was, in fact, 15 at the time.
“In all honesty, it was obvious. Even to this day, I look young to some people. Imagine if I was 15,” she said.
Morales said she completed high school and attended a few weeks of post-secondary education. She left Mexico for the U.S. because she needed to support her family.
The next witness, Osbeli Junech Hernandez, said he lied about his age to federal immigration agents after the immigration raid on Agriprocessors because he was afraid to spend more time in jail.
“My friends said if you said you were a minor, you ended up spending more time in jail,” he said through an interpreter.
Defense attorneys have suggested this week that the workers’ gave so many different ages to authorities because they don’t actually know how old they are.
2:35 p.m., Waterloo, Ia. — Mark Andrew Spangler, a former night shift poultry supervisor at Agriprocessors, said minors “most definitely” worked at the kosher slaughterhouse.
“Anybody that’s been in the business as long as I have can tell when it’s a child working out there on the floor. Unless you’re blind, you know. Not only by their physical features, but also their manners and how you conduct yourself,” he said.
Children at the slaughterhouse would throw things at each other and flirt, he said. “It’d be like walking into a junior high school gymnasium.”
At least half of the workers he supervised on the night shift were minors, said the 18-year poultry industry veteran.
Spangler said he reported to plant manager Gary Norris, who in turn reported to Heshy Rubashkin, Sholom’s brother.
Spangler said everyone at the plant could see what he saw, and that everyone entered and exited the plant through same doors, even top management.
Spangler, who now lives in North Carolina, was driven to court by agents from the Division of Criminal Investigation. He is serving a short jail sentence in Clayton County for failure to appear on charges of operating while intoxicated, second offense, and driving with a revoked license.
He was convicted on three petty theft misdemeanors in Florida in 2002 and 2003.
1:42 p.m., Waterloo, Ia. — Sholom Rubashkin’s defense continued to question why former Agriprocessors employees who take the stand can’t remember telling state investigators in 2008 they didn’t think minors worked at the kosher slaughterhouse.
But prosecutors showed communication barriers and a lack of knowledge about the U.S. legal system may hinder testimony of former workers from Guatemala and Mexico with little or no formal education.
As they have all week, witnesses who took the stand told of desperate conditions they faced crossing the border and while working at the kosher slaughterhouse in Postville.
Rubashkin, a former plant executive, faces 83 misdemeanor child labor charges. The state alleges underage workers worked with dangerous chemicals and dangerous machinery.
State prosecutors and defense attorneys presented documents that showed Yukary Hernandez Gonzalez gave contradictory statements in interviews two months apart.
Defense attorney Mark Weinhardt asked Gonzalez if she remembered telling a state agent at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church in December 2008 that she was never injured at the plant, and that she didn’t think any minors worked there.
Gonzalez said she did not. Weinhardt then pressed the issue.
“If an interview report said you were never injured while working, are you telling us today that the interview report was wrong? And I think that’s a yes or no question,” he said.
“I can’t say yes, because I don’t remember. I can’t say no, because I don’t want to say it’s wrong,” she said, shaking her head.
Gonzalez at one point said she could tell minors worked at the plant because their faces “were like children.”
Assistant Iowa Attorney General Laura Roan asked her if she remembered giving an interview to a Florida immigrant advocacy center in October 2008 while in federal prison in Tallahassee. .
Hernandez Gonzalez, who served five months in prison for using false documents to obtain employment, said she never gave an interview there.
Roan then showed her signature on a copy of her interview with an immigrant center in Tallahassee. She said it was hers.
The document said she told an immigrant advocate, “There were many other minors in the area. The supervisors could tell they were minors because they looked young. And the workers talked openly about how old everyone else was.”
Hernandez Gonzalez said the statement was accurate because that’s what she has always told people in interviews.
Elizandro Ismael Gomez Lopez, 17, recounted getting lost and wandering the desert for a week at the Mexico-U.S. border.
He said he survived by drinking “the water that the animals drank.”
When he arrived in Postville, he said he paid $500 a month to live in a house owned by a rabbi. He said his biggest check was for $495, when for a short time he worked from 6 a.m. to midnight for a short time.
On cross-examination, he said he was happy at Agriprocessors, and came to Iowa because his brother said he was happy there.
An earlier witness said he had trouble understanding all the questions through an interpreter, and Gomez Lopez appeared to have similar problems.
Twice he said he did not understand questions from the prosecutor on if he left Guatemala for the United States.
Gomez Lopez finally said he had traveled to the United States when Deputy Iowa Attorney General Thomas H. Miller asked the question a third different way.
Gomez Lopez said he received a U-visa to stay in the United States, but didn’t appear to understand what one was or why it was issued.
He said it’s a permanent visa. However, they are valid for only four years. He also said he didn’t know under what conditions the government would issue one.
The defense has been arguing all week that some of the witnesses testified in exchange for the visa.
Gomez Lopez said he received a subpoena to testify today.
Why cant these poor witness keep on track with their lies that they are being bribed by the DA with 4 year Visas?
Posted by: Dr Moe | May 14, 2010 at 06:43 PM
Dr Moe,
they've been telling lies all their lives. they just can't remember which is the lie they are supposed to say on stand.
like the witness who had 5 different birth dates!
or the one that couldn't remember ever being interviewed!
or the one that just signed what ever papers he was asked to sign!
and all the others, who all of a sudden, can't remember anything!
Posted by: ber | May 15, 2010 at 06:09 AM
The WSC summary of this week's events:
Uneducated sleazy bunch of illegals can’t get their story straight about how they found work with an uneducated sleazy bunch of Hasidim who can’t get their story straight about how they hired them.
Posted by: WoolSilkCotton | May 15, 2010 at 11:38 AM
Moe, Ber,
After the conviction what is going to be your explanation, the fact is I am not going to worry about what the judge said or didn’t say, the judge will not sit in the deliberation room and I am doubtful that the judge meant that all the witness have a credibility gap. Additionally, if there is a credibility issue with a witness, the law gives the jury the opportunity to either disregard all, or just part of the testimony. Let me just tell you that you are reaching for straw to hang on, like a person who is drowning. They will grasps at anything, even a passing straw.
Just remember when I will tell you, “told you so”
Posted by: OMG | May 15, 2010 at 08:55 PM