Rubashkin Trial Day 4: Morning Summary

Calel hauled barrels of rotten turkeys hundreds of feet down steps and onto a waste pile outside the plant. He remembered them being very heavy for his 14-year-old body. “The barrels would have 12 turkeys or more. So I think they were 100 pounds or more.”

Rubashkin trial: Midday summary
BLOG POST BY JENS KROGSTAD • Des Moines Register

12:00 p.m., Waterloo, Ia. — Court is adjourned for lunch until 1:30 p.m. Two government witnesses took the stand this morning.

Deputy Iowa Attorney General Thomas H. Miller showed the jury a yearbook photo of Henry Lopez Calel.

Calel’s black hair fell into his eyes. A thin fuzz covered the 16-year-old’s upper lip.

At the time of the picture, he had already worked for two years at Agriprocessors. Calel, now 20, said he still does not shave.

He now has government permission to work at Agristar, the company that bought Agriprocessors last year.

The state alleges minors worked excessive hours and were exposed to poisonous chemicals and dangerous machinery at Agriprocessors, the kosher slaughterhouse in Postville.

Federal agents arrested hundred of workers in an immigration raid at the plant two years ago this month.

Former plant executive Sholom Rubashkin faces 83 misdemeanor child labor charges in the scheduled three-week trial. Attorneys presented opening statements Monday.

Water that fell on Calel’s chest when he walked under the production line turned his white shirts red from the blood, he said.

Calel hauled barrels of rotten turkeys hundreds of feet down steps and onto a waste pile outside the plant, he said. He remembered them being very heavy for his 14-year-old body.

“The barrels would have 12 turkeys or more. So I think they were 100 pounds or more,” he said.

On cross-examination, Calel said his parents helped him immigrate and obtain work illegally.

Defense attorney F. Montgomery Brown suggested Calel hauled out far fewer turkeys per day over far fewer distances. Calel stuck to his initial testimony.

“Henry, would you look at me, please. Are you exaggerating how many turkeys you had to throw away?” he said.

Calel said his supervisors pressured him to work faster, because there were always more barrels to haul.

“Did you satisfy your supervisor that you were doing your job properly?” Miller said.

“No, they wanted more, faster. It seemed like it was useless because by the time I got back there’d be too many,” Caleb said.

He also worked with bleach and other chemicals when in the slaughter area. The chemicals made him sick, and sometimes he coughed up blood, he said.

“Towards the end I felt like I was choking, I couldn’t breathe,” he said.

He tried to return to his job, he said, and told his supervisors that he didn’t feel well enough to work.

Calel’s mom presented a doctor’s note for him. But his supervisors didn’t accept it because they thought he was lying, so he lost his job, he said.

That’s when he returned to school for a little more than a year. He returned to the plant the summer of 2006.

In his second stretch at Agriprocessors, he said he met Yesenia Cordero Mendoza. She tearfully testified on Monday.

Calel said the day of the raid he went to find her and say goodbye before federal agents arrested them.

He expected they would both be deported, he said. She is from Mexico; he is from Guatemala.

“I gave her a hug. I said it was in God’s hands now,” he said. “I didn’t know when we’d see each other next.”

To begin the day, the defense cross-examined the last witness to take the stand on Wednesday, Elmer Hernandez Lopez.

Defense attorney Mark Weinhardt chipped away at Lopez’s claim that he slaughtered 90 chickens per minute.

He also focused on Lopez giving incorrect ages to authorities in the months following the raid.

Weinhardt drew a diagram showing eight teams of workers slaughtered the chickens. He said that meant he slaughtered around 11 chickens per minute.

“That’s how the math works, right?” he said.

He then asked Lopez to demonstrate to the jury how he would lift chickens off a hook every five seconds.

“I’d like you to do the motion each time I say the word chicken,” he said.

11:22 a.m., Waterloo, Ia. — Defense attorney F. Montgomery Brown just tried saying the Spanish word for 18 — “dieciocho” — while cross-examining Henry Lopez Calel. The entire courtroom laughed, including the judge and Brown himself.

I’ll have a midday update around noon rounding up the action this morning.

10:34 a.m., Waterloo, Ia. — Judge Callahan has called the morning break.

The next witness, Henry Lopez Calel, 20, told the jury about his family’s desperate quest to immigrate illegally into the United States.

His family lived in a village of about 100 houses. They worked in fields with machetes and hoes, he said. They were very poor.

Calel’s dad had worked in the United States on two different occassions, and returned the last time because he was ill. That’s when Calel said he decided to go north.

His family paid $5,000 per person to cross into the U.S, he said. But he was arrested in Mexico and returned to Guatemala on his first try to cross with his father. But his second try was free. His mother accompanied him this time.

“You have three tries to cross with one payment to the coyote,” he said.

In fall 2004, Calel said he provided false identification to gain work at Agriprocessors a couple weeks after arriving in Postville. He was 14, and not even five feet tall.

He said Elizabeth Billmeyer accepted the applications. It took about 2-3 hours to be hired. He watched a video in English for about 30 minutes, but he didn’t understand it.

Other witnesses have said they watched safety videos of that length in English.

He returned at 5 p.m. the same day to start work.

Once on the job, he said he had to haul barrels of dead turkeys — and those the USDA deemed unsafe for consumption – hundreds of feet down some steps and onto a compost pile outside the plant. He remembers them being very heavy for his 14-year-old body.

“The turkeys were really heavy. The barrels would have 12 turkeys or more. So I think they were 100 pounds or more,” he said.

The water that fell on my chest when I walked under the line turned my white shirts red from the blood, he said.

Calel said they pressured him to work faster, because there were always more barrels to haul.

“Did you satisfy your supervisor that you were doing your job properly?” said Deputy Iowa Attorney General Thomas H. Miller.

“No, they wanted more, faster. It seemed like it was useless because by the time I got back there’d be too many,” he said.

On the same shift, he also cut up turkeys. He worked with a machine with sharp knives that removed the thighs. He worked near it because he had to add thighs constantly. He was never injured.

But he worked with bleach and other chemicals when he worked in the kill area. The chemicals made him sick, he said.

“When I first started, it was coughing coughing, then my head would hurt. My throat would hurt.”

“Towards the end I felt like I was choking, I couldn’t breathe,” he said.

He said he tried to return to his job, and told his supervisors that he didn’t feel well enough to work.

Calel’s mom presented a doctor’s note for him. The supervisors didn’t accept it because they thought he was lying, so he lost his job.

That’s when he returned to school for a little more than a year, before returning to the plant the summer of 2006.

NOTE: The juror the judge dismissed yesterday was female. It is now a four-woman, three-man jury.

9:57 a.m., Waterloo, Ia. — On re-direct, Assistant Iowa Attorney General Laura Roan asked Lopez if he ever caught his fingers on hooks that carried the chickens.

Roan said the defense had suggested they were similar to relatively harmless paperclips.

“Did you ever get any of your fingers, gloves caught on the hooks?” she said.

Lopez said he did. When that happened, he had to yank hard to free his hand because the automated machine never stopped, he said.

When Roan tried to ask if his supervisors or rabbis ever called him names, the defense objected. The judge sustained, because it was outside the scope of the trial.

The state alleges minors worked excessive hours and were exposed to poisonous chemicals and dangerous machinery.

9:47 a.m., Waterloo, Ia. — Defense attorney Mark Weinhardt chipped away at Lopez’s claim that he slaughtered 90 chickens per minute.

He also focused on Lopez giving incorrect ages to authorities in the months following the raid.

Weinhardt drew a diagram showing eight teams of workers slaughtered the chickens. He said that meant he slaughtered around 11 chickens per minute.

“That’s how the math works, right?” he said.

He then asked Lopez to demonstrate to the jury how he would lift a chickens off a hook every five seconds.

“I’d like you to do the motion each time I say the word chicken,” he said.

Weinhardt then moved on to the witnesses’ age. He produced documents that showed he gave government agents three different ages after the May 12, 2008 immigration raid on Agriprocessors.

He accused Lopez of lying about his age, and produced his birth certificate only after he found out in jail that minors were being released.

Lopez said that was true, but not all the minors were released.

Lopez was 17 at the time of the raid, and spent three days in jail.

Weinhardt then produced a document in which he said Lopez lied about when he came to Postville, who he came with, and what jobs he worked.

“None of that is true” Weinhardt said.

“No of course not. I was mistaken,” Lopez said.

Before reading the document, Weinhardt read a statement from it that said Lopez gave his statement in his native language of Spanish, and that what he said was read back to him in Spanish.

Lopez said he has been working at Agristar, the kosher slaughterhouse company that bought Agriprocessors last year.

He can do so because he received a U-visa, which allows him to work in the U.S. for four years if he can aid the government in its prosecution of Rubashkin.

The state is now re-directing the witness.

9:02 a.m., Waterloo, Ia. — Day four of prosecution witnesses begins with cross examination of Elmer Hernandez Lopez. Yesterday he said he was 16 when he started working at Agriprocessors shortly after arriving from Guatemala.

He said he eventually worked more than 12 hours a day slaughtering up to 90 chickens per minute.

Rubashkin faces 83 misdemeanor child labor charges. The state alleges minors worked excessive hours and were exposed to poisonous chemicals and dangerous machinery.