The English edition of Yated Ne'eman reports that a powerful response letter submitted by Shalom-Mordechai Rubashkin and his lawyers reveals new evidence about the administration's scandalous conduct, while withholding vital information from the defense team - information that could have changed the severe sentence handed down to him.
About two weeks ago, the FBI submitted to Rubashkin's lawyers the documents they were supposed to receive under the Freedom of Information Act, just days before the deadline for submitting the response letter.
The response letter details a series of governmental-legal abuses aimed at preventing justice.
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The lawyers are demanding that the ruling be overturned due to a lack of due process. In the letter, they detail the judge's connection to an animal cruelty organization, and present the fact that the judge did not disqualify herself from hearing the case, despite a conflict of interest.
The newly released documents prove her connection to the organization. They also shed light on a bogus "threat investigation" conducted by federal law enforcement, in light of the judge’s claim of threats from the defendant.
The documents prove that the judge's husband, a senior partner in the firm that represented Agrippas and Rubashkin, had sensitive information from inside the slaughterhouse, which was apparently given to his wife in violation of procedures.
The response letter details countless other distortions in the way justice was done in the terrible trial of Shalom-Mordechai Rubashkin, such as the way in which the judge caused Rubashkin to remain without a lawyer in the midst of a critical legal process, thereby preventing her from filing a motion to disqualify him due to failure to meet deadlines.
It should be noted that the claims were made by Rubashkin's attorneys throughout, but for the first time they are accompanied by federal documents confirming the existence of a conflict of interest.
Shalom Rubashkin, a Chabad follower, previously ran a kosher meat production plant in the state of Iowa in the United States, which was the largest of its kind in the world. He was indicted by the authorities on a series of criminal offenses, and sentenced to 27 years in prison and a fine of $31 million.
In recent years, the factory was responsible for about 60 percent of the kosher beef market in the United States and about 40 percent of the poultry market.
Rubashkin was convicted in November 2009 of 86 counts of financial fraud, followed by a separate trial on the illegal employment of workers charge. On June 21, 2010, Iowa District Court Judge Linda Reid sentenced Rubashkin to 27 years in prison.
Rubashkin's lawyers filed a motion for a retrial, claiming that the judge should have disqualified herself from hearing the case because she was involved in the investigation of the affair. The judge decided not to accept the argument.
Senior jurists in the United States believed that there was truth to the allegations, and in January 2011 his lawyers filed an appeal with the United States Court of Appeals over this claim, but this appeal was also rejected.
On January 30, 2014, Rubashkin's lawyers filed a new appeal in federal court in New York, based on the grounds that there were serious flaws in the judicial process, and in particular, that Judge Reid, who sentenced him, should have disqualified herself from the legal panel.
