10 years after a jury trial convicted him of 31 charges, leading to a 20-year federal jail sentence, peanut broker Michael Parnell, 65, has actually submitted his opening short in his appeal of that conviction and sentence with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta.
In the quick, his lawyer, Elliott Harding of Charlottesville, VA, states among the concerns “is unique and warrants oral argument.”
Parnell's business, P.P. Sales, transferred peanut items from the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) plant in Blakely, GA, to Kellogg's. After an across the country Salmonella break out– that sickened a minimum of 700 and eliminated 9– the submission of incorrect salmonella screening by PCA was found, leading to a number of convictions, consisting of Parnell's.
He is presently put behind bars in the low security lockup at the federal jail at Butner, NC.
Parnell's conviction and sentence enforced by the high court were likewise “verified” on appeal by the 11th Circuit in 2018, and the Supreme Court chose then not to hear it. His Habeas Corpus, or Motion 2255, was submitted in late 2019 to abandon his sentence. The trial court, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, last year rejected Parnell's Habeas movement.
This present interest the 11th Circuit was made on May 26, 2023, and on Jan. 10, 2024, the appellate court released a certificate of appealability for 2 problems. Harding's brand-new 68-page quick submitted on Feb. 20 makes Parnell's finest arguments.
Early in the Parnell quick, it declares the district court “erred in figuring out that Michael Parnell might not develop an anticipation of jury bias based upon unfavorable promotion.”
The quick states reports about the “700 diseases and 9 deaths were prejudicial to all offenders, however specifically Michael Parnell since Kellogg's was not related to the items connected to any reported deaths.”
It states his trial lawyer, Edward Tolley, “understood this, yet stopped working to move for a modification of place” either before trial or as soon as it came out that some jurors had pre-trial understanding of the deaths. All the lawyers, defense, and prosecution concurred that the salmonella deaths would not be raised at the trial.
“Ultimately, eleven potential jurors exposed pre-trial understanding of the supposed deaths, and 2 made it on to the last jury, jurors 37 and 84,” the quick states.
“Empaneling these jurors was reversible mistake, however it intensified when a minimum of among the twelve jurors found out of the accusations from others before trial, and another 3 of twelve found out after the trial started. Enabling the case to stay in Albany cultivated an environment of prevalent media protection and presumptions that might not be refuted, identified, or reduced at trial.”
“It was difficult to fix up jurors by having them state they might reserve extrinsic details. Even if they could, Jurors 4, 10, and 12 might not be questioned about what effect such details would have on their capability to choose the case since they discovered of it throughout the trial from other jurors,” it included.
