Feds seek life term in slaughterhouse case, surprising manager’s supporters, ex-prosecutors

Feds seek life sentence in slaughterhouse case

IOWA CITY, Iowa — A request that a former kosher slaughterhouse manager spend the rest of his life in prison for financial fraud has surprised Jewish groups and led six former U.S. attorneys general to complain that prosecutors are seeking an excessive sentence.

A sentencing hearing for Sholom Rubashkin will begin Wednesday in Cedar Rapids, ending a nearly two-year saga that began with a huge raid on the Agriprocessors Inc. meatpacking plant in Postville, in northeastern Iowa, which resulted in the arrests of 389 people on immigration charges.

Rubashkin has been jailed since November 2009, when he was convicted of 86 financial fraud charges that stemmed from fake invoices he created to show a lender the plant had more money flowing in than it did. Prosecutors say the fraud cost the bank $26 million.

Prosecutors later dropped 72 charges of immigration violations but called for a life sentence, saying the 50-year-old Rubashkin should “be treated no differently than other defendants sentenced by the court.”

That request shocked Rubashkin’s supporters and even some who didn’t question his guilt.

“Look, he committed a crime, and when you commit a crime, the nature of our system of justice is that you pay for the crime,” said Rabbi David Zweibel, executive vice president of New York-based Agudath of Israel, a national Orthodox group. “But the prospect of this man spending probably the rest of his life behind bars is horrible.”

The proposed sentence led 23 former prosecutors to send a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Linda R. Reade arguing for a shorter prison term. Among those signing the letter are former U.S. attorneys general Janet Reno and Edwin Meese III.

The letter says there’s no justification for prosecutors to “call for a life sentence — or anything close to it — for Mr. Rubashkin.” It notes that Rubashkin is a first-time, nonviolent offender whose personal history suggests “a sentence of a modest number of years could and would be more than sufficient.”

Alan Vinegrad, a former U.S. attorney from New York, organized the letter, said Rubashkin’s attorney, Guy Cook.

The proposed sentence has brought together a disparate group of people who have followed Rubashkin’s case, ranging from those who thought he was unfairly prosecuted because of his religious beliefs to some who thought he was guilty, said Jeff Stier, chairman of the board of directors of Jewish International Connection in New York City.

“There’s a broad middle ground here of reasonable people where I put myself,” said Stier, whose group serves as a networking hub for Jews who emigrate to New York. “The guy did something wrong. We don’t like him very much, but his sentence should be consistent with that of others who have committed similar crimes.”

Others point to what they see as a string of arguments by prosecutors that they claim indicates the justice system is singling out Rubashkin because of his appearance. He belongs to a Hasidic branch of Judaism in which men wear beards, long black coats and fedoras.

Rabbi Shmully Hecht, an adviser to Eliezer, a Jewish society at Yale University, said he was especially disturbed by the prosecution’s argument at a January 2009 hearing that Rubashkin should remain in jail because he was “a de facto dual citizen” who would flee to Israel if released.

“The motivation (for the life sentence) may have been because of a very aggressive immigration policy of the Bush administration, the media that the case attracted, but one possibility may be anti-Semitic undertones,” Hecht said. “I think the anti-Semitism comes, quite frankly, from the U.S. attorney’s office. I think it has to be questioned what’s driving the government to lock a man up with an unprecedented sentence for the rest of his life.”

Bob Teig, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa, disputed those claims.

He said he’s seen “a pattern of misinformation” in the thousands of e-mails sent to the U.S. attorney’s office since Rubashkin’s trial. “Factually, there has been a little truth that has lead to a big lie,” he said.

Teig pointed to several elements of a campaign to reduce Rubashkin’s proposed sentence, including whether Rubashkin profited from the fraud. Teig said the jury was never asked to decide whether Rubashkin personally profited from the fraud.

An organized effort has formed around Rubashkin’s case, backed by a website and New York City public relations firm.

“We’ve got the truth,” Teig said. But because of the campaign, “the truth has become a victim in this process.”

Jonathan Edelstein, a lawyer and expert on U.S.-Israeli extradition law, said ever since the Enron case, when corporate leaders were found to have lied to investors, the government has come down hard on white-collar crime. Just weeks ago, he noted, Minnesota businessman Tom Petters was sentenced to 50 years for a Ponzi scheme that cost investors $3.7 billion.

But Edelstein still questions such a harsh sentence for Rubashkin.

“Not long ago it would have been considered absurd for a nonviolent criminal to serve a life sentence,” he said.

Reade, the judge who ultimately determines the sentence, may consider factors other than Rubashkin’s conviction, said William Mateja, a former assistant U.S. attorney and coordinator of the President’s Corporate Fraud Task Force under the Bush administration. That includes his involvement in employing hundreds of workers who were convicted of immigration violations and deported, crimes which do not need to be proven, only shown to be true by a preponderance of the evidence.