Information gathered from interviews illegally done by an attorney,
private detectives and a Rubashkin family member with jurors from Sholom
Rubashkin’s 2009 bank fraud trial has been ruled
inadmissible in any future court proceeding or appeal.
Sholom Rubashkin
Rubashkin Barred From Using Juror Information After Illegal Contacts By Rubashkin Attorneys, P.I.s And Family
Shmarya Rosenberg • Failedmessiah.com
Information gathered from interviews illegally done by an attorney, private detectives and a Rubashkin family member with jurors from Sholom Rubashkin’s 2009 bank fraud trial has reportedly been ruled inadmissible in any future court proceeding or appeal.
Federal Chief District Court Judge Linda Reade ordered the interviews sealed this morning. Last week she ruled that contact by Rubashkin’s attorneys and private detectives – sometimes accompanied by a pleading Rubashkin family member – with the jurors violated a long-established district court rule prohibiting attorneys from contacting jurors before, during or after trials without fist getting permission from the trial judge, the Cedar Falls Gazette reported.
Similar rules exist in most jurisdictions in the US to prevent harassment and intimidation of jurors.
Reade ordered that the jurors’ information be turned over to the court and sealed to prevent any use in the future.
The jurors were reportedly contacted to find out if any of them were anti-Semitic or prejudiced against Rubashkin in any way, James Wyrsch, an attorney who was then working on Rubashkin’s appeal, said last week.
Wyrsch has apparently since resigned as Rubashkin’s counsel.
Last month a juror contacted the US Attorney’s office and complained that private investigators and Rubashkin’s daughter had arrived on the juror’s doorstep uninvited and badgered the juror, frightening his family.
A subsequent investigation showed that Rubashkin’s attorney Guy Cook, now president of the Iowa Bar Association, had illegally contacted jurors as far back as 2009.
Cook at first claimed he thought the court had lifted the ban on contacting jurors when Reade instructed then at the conclusion of the trial that they could talk to “anyone or no one” – a claim that many find laughable because Reade’s instruction to the jurors was given in common boilerplate language that is never understood to mean the lifting of the ban on attorney contact with jurors. Lifting that ban would require a specific instruction to attorneys.
In a court document filed this week, Cook reportedly wrote that “genuinely believed the trial court orally lifted the prohibition of contact with jurors. I now recognize from the (Sept. 23) hearing, however, the court intended something different. I accept that and offer my sincere apology for any misunderstanding.”
Paul Rosenberg, another attorney working for Rubashkin, reportedly said today that neither he or Rubashkin were going to use the juror interviews. He also claimed that none of the information in those interviews was helpful for Rubashkin’s case.
Rubashkin was convicted on 86 counts of bank fraud, related charges, including money laundering.
He was sentenced in 2010 to 27 years in federal prison – 25 for the fraud-related charges and 2 extra years for perjuring himself in court.
Federal sentencing guidelines called for a sentence of between 22 and 30 years.
Although no proof exists to support it, Rubashkin’s family, supporters and legal team have long claimed that Rubashkin was singled out for harsh prosecution because he is a hasidic Jew. One Rubashkin attorney compared Postville to Nazi-occupied Poland and another compared Reade to the biblical archenemy of the Jews, Haman, while Rubashkin fundraisers have used alleged anti-Semitism as a main tool in their fundraising.
Rubashkin looted Agriprocessors, the glatt kosher slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa owned by his father. He took at least $1.5 million for his own personal use, put millions more into Chabad charities, laundered money through charities he controlled, and defrauded his lenders out of almost $27 million dollars by falsifying his business records and laundering money.
He lost all of his standard appeals and the US Supreme Court declined to hear his case.