In what is perhaps the global Jewish community's most closely watched criminal case, a significant break offered Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin's sympathizers a surge of encouragement, as his attorneys filed a motion for a new trial amid evidence they contend challenges Judge Linda Reade's impartiality.
Supporters of Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin are hoping that an unusual legal maneuver will mark an eagerly awaited turning point in the nearly three-year-old government case against him.
Rubashkin’s legal team led by Guy Cook filed a motion with the Federal Court of the Northern District of Iowa to have the defendant’s November 2009 conviction on eighty-six counts of white collar crimes overturned and a new trial ordered.
This newest motion relies on hitherto secret government documents accessed through the Freedom of Information Act. These documents reveal that Judge Linda Reade who presided in the Rubashkin case and who handed down a sentence considered to be excessive by most legal experts failed to disclose the depth of her involvement in the planning of the May 2008 raid on Agriprocessors kosher meat processing company where Rubashkin was the chief executive officer. Prosecutors went to Judge Reade to get judicial approval for the search warrants necessary to conduct the raid but defense attorneys argue that Judge Reade’s overactive role and expressions of support for the raid should have led her to disqualify herself from presiding over Rubashkin’s trial.
Rabbi Shlomo Eliezer Meisels a lead askan with the Vaad L’Hatzolas Rubashkin tells Mishpacha “We are all ready and waiting for a neis so that Sholom Mordechai gets out of his predicament. This is a step in the direction of cloaking the neis in derech hateva.”
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