Stewart Parnell’s legal skilled, Amy Lee Copeland, requested an extension for submitting an Appellant’s Instant, which used to be granted by the clerk for the 11th Ciricuit Court docket of Appeals in Atlanta.
Copeland used to be to have filed the quick by June 26. The extension technique the quick is no longer due until July 25, and the Appendix is due Aug. 1. Copeland’s clarification for soliciting for the extension and the Clerk’s reasoning for granting the demand used to be no longer recorded within the court docket.
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has assigned Stuart E. Walker from the U.S. Attorney’s region of job for the Middle District of Georgia because the authorities lead counsel for Parnell’s allure.
Essentially the latest extension comes as half of Stewart Parnell’s Habeas Corpus petition filed almost four years within the past, which is now on allure to the 11th Circuit.
Stewart and his brother Michael Parnell were convicted by a 2014 jury trial in Albany, GA. Both were linked with the now-defunct Peanut Company of The usa, which used to be stumbled on to blame for the 2008-09 multistate Salmonella outbreak that sickened tons of and killed a few.
For their extra than one felony convictions, Steward Parnell used to be sentenced to twenty-eight years in federal penal advanced, and Michael Parnell used to be sentenced to twenty years. The Parnell brothers are both seeking to vacate the rest of their sentences by Habeas Corpus filings.
The Parnells filed petitions for federal Writs of Habeas Corpus, below 18 U.S.C. §2254, which is for these in federal custody. The Latin phrase “habeas corpus” translates into “it’s doubtless you’ll per chance simply have the physique.” A petition for the writ claims somebody is being detained towards their constitutional rights. A Habeas Corpus petition claims the arrest, sentence or trial violated constitutional laws, making imprisonment illegal.
Ineffective assistance of trial counsel is per chance the most conventional anxiety cited in Habeas Corpus petitions and both of the Parnell brothers have raised that claim.
Stewart used to be first to file on Sept. 6, 2019. His attorneys wrote: “Stewart Parnell owned the Peanut Company of The usa (“PCA”), a peanut processing plant in Blakely, Georgia – a runt town in southwest Georgia 48 miles southwest of Albany.
“In 2014, Mr. Parnell used to be convicted of conspiracy, the introduction of adulterated and misbranded food into interstate commerce, interstate shipments fraud, wire fraud, and obstruction of justice stemming from a salmonella outbreak tied to PCA. After an unsuccessful sigh allure, United States v. Parnell, 723 Fed. Appx. 745 (11th Cir. 2018), Mr. Parnell now reveals that his trial counsel offered ineffective assistance by failing to dash for a transformation of venue or to strike jurors for reason who knew about allegations of deaths on account of the salmonella outbreak.”
Michael Parnell filed his Habeus Corpus petition about a month later.
After submitting their petitions, the Parnells every scored a victory when the Magistrate Resolve decided the disorders raised were noteworthy of an evidentiary hearing. Magistrate Resolve Thomas Q. Langstaff for the Middle District of Georgia presided over the hearings in late Would perchance furthermore simply 2021 within the same Albany, GA, courthouse where the Parnells were convicted.
Federal marshals delivered the Parnells to the evidentiary hearings and they were ready to alter scrutinize and imprint lists. But after it used to be all over, Langstaff ruled towards their petitions in his advice to the Middle District of Georgia, and the trial resolve, W. Louis Sands, agreed.
The final denial by the Middle District of Georgia left an allure to the 11th Circuit because the next option. Stewart Parnell’s petition arrived there first and it has already cleared one good obstacle by a hit a circulate “for a certificate of appealability.”
While “granted in half,” U.S. Circuit Resolve Andrew L. Brasher has well-liked Stewart Parnell to allure on two crucial disorders:
1.) whether or no longer the distinct court erred in determining that Parnell could well presumably no longer attach a presumption of jury prejudice, in step with adversarial pretrial publicity, below Skilling v. United States; and
2.) whether or no longer a exhibiting of presumed jury prejudice below Skilling, operates to attach both prongs of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim, in step with the counsels’ failure to dash for a transformation of venue.
Michael Parnell’s allure to the 11th Circuit used to be filed on Would perchance furthermore simply 26. He is represented by two Virginia attorneys, Elliott M. Harding and William J. Dinkin. His appealability demand used to be filed on June 15.
Sooner than taking his petition as a lot as the Atlanta court, Michael Parnell used to be a hit in getting his conviction record corrected by the Middle District. On the advice of his Bureau of Prisons (BOP) case manager, Parnell’s Introduction of Adulterated Meals offenses used to be corrected to “Introduction of Misbranded Meals.”
It used to be Nov. 10, 2008, when the CDC’s PulseNet workers first infamous a runt and extremely dispersed multistate cluster of 13 Salmonella Typhimurium isolates with an odd DNA fingerprint or pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) sample reported from 12 states. By April 20, 2009, 714 people in 46 states were confirmed with the outbreak stress of Salmonella Typhimurium linked with the Peanut Company of The usa (PCA) facility in Blakely, GA. Nine deaths were an immediate results of the outbreak, in step with the Centers for Disease Retain watch over and Prevention.
Felony funds linked to the outbreak were filed in 2013 towards 5 PCA managers and executives. Fully the Parnell brothers stay in federal custody.
Stewart Parnell, 68, has 15 extra years to serve. He is held at West Virginia’s Hazelton federal penal advanced. Michael Parnell, 64, has eight years final on his sentence on the federal lockup at Fortress Dix, NJ.
Discussion about this post