The federal appeals court in Atlanta has upheld the convictions of former top executives at the Peanut Corp. of America, whose tainted peanuts were linked to the deaths of nine people.
The court also upheld former PCA president Stewart Parnell's 28-year prison term, believed to be the stiffest ever in a food safety case. During a 2014 trial, Parnell, 63, and his younger brother, Michael, a manager at the now-defunct company, were convicted of defrauding consumers over the safety of their products.
In a unanimous opinion, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Michael Parnell’s 20-year prison sentence and the five-year term given to a third defendant, Mary Wilkerson, a quality assurance director.
The case should send a message that resonates throughout the food industry, said Michael Blume, who headed the Justice Department's Consumer Protection Branch when the PCA was prosecuted.
“The result here is a very important signal for anybody in the food industry that the Department of Justice is willing to prosecute individuals and corporate executives for food safety violations,” said Blume, now a New York attorney. “Folks in the industry need to know they have to be very vigilant in their compliance.”
During 2008 and 2009, more than 700 people across the country got sick from eating salmonella-tainted peanut products processed at PCA’s plant in Blakely, Ga. The outbreak led to one of the largest food recalls in U.S. history, and Peanut Corp. permanently shuttered its operations.
Stewart Parnell had directed PCA to retest products that had tested positive for salmonella until a negative result was obtained, the appeals court said. The company also shipped peanut products before receiving test results and even shipped products after receiving confirmed, positive results.
In fact, all three defendants knew PCA had received positive salmonella test results before the outbreak, but they were not forthcoming about it during an ensuing federal investigation, the opinion said.
The defendants contended they deserved a new trial because, in the jury room, some jurors talked about the salmonella outbreak causing deaths. And because the government had agreed not to present evidence of the deaths, the jurors must have come across this information through outside research, which they were prohibited from doing.
But the jury did hear testimony that salmonella poisoning can cause fever, bloody diarrhea and vomiting, and it was also told the poisoning could be life-threatening, the opinion said.
“In light of all this evidence, we cannot conclude that the exposure of several jurors to the fact that several people also died from the outbreak was highly prejudicial,” the court said, adding that evidence as to the defendants’ guilt was “overwhelming.”
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