WATERLOO — Although Sholom Rubashkin is facing up to 25 years in federal prison for a fraud conviction, the recently concluded state trial over misdemeanor child labor charges was an important fight, according to people from both sides of the battle. “This kind of talks to what type of person you are, in the sense… Read more »

Former Agriprocessors executive Sholom Rubashkin has been acquitted of charges that he allowed minors to work at his kosher meatpacking plant, the first legal victory he’s scored in a long time. After a five-week trial in an Iowa state court and 12 hours of deliberations, a seven-person jury on Monday cleared Rubashkin of the 67… Read more »

(JTA) — Kosher meatpacking executive Sholom Rubashkin was acquitted in an Iowa state court of child labor violations. Rubashkin was found not guilty on all 67 counts of child labor violations, relating to 26 teenagers from South America who worked at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. Several then-underage workers at the Agriprocessors… Read more »

WATERLOO — Jurors in Sholom Rubashkin’s child labor trial are expected to begin deliberations Friday morning. In an unusual move, Judge Nathan Callahan decided to allow one alternate to accompany the panel into deliberations because of the possibility of illness. Both the prosecution and the defense agreed to the arrangement after a juror’s apparent sickness… Read more »

WATERLOO, Iowa—The former manager of a kosher Iowa slaughterhouse did not want underage workers at the plant, defense attorneys told jurors during closing arguments Thursday. Jury deliberations were expected to begin Friday morning in the child labor trial of Sholom Rubashkin, the former manager of the Agriprocessors Inc. kosher slaughterhouse in Postville. He faces 67… Read more »

4:15 p.m., Waterloo, Ia. — The jury is dismissed for the day. The attorneys are now hashing out some issues related to evidence presented today. Aaron Goldsmith said he made an unannounced visit with a university professor to Agriprocessors in 2007 and found it to be a clean, well-run plant. He later brought many groups… Read more »

Excerpts from the Des Moines Register: After court adjourned for the day yesterday in the Rubashkin labor trial and the jury left the courtroom, defense attorney F. Montgomery Brown asked the prosecuti to turn over all evidence – if it hasn’t already – related to interviews of witnesses by government agents after the immigration raid…. Read more »

The eastern Iowa meat plant at the center of a massive fraud and immigration case failed several times to comply with the terms of a loan that kept the business afloat, a bank official said Tuesday. Phil Lykens, a senior credit officer at First Bank Business Capital, acknowledged that the St. Louis bank continued to… Read more »

Postville, IA – Lawyers for an indicted eastern Iowa slaughterhouse executive filed a lawsuit Friday demanding government accounts of how a May 2008 immigration raid was planned and executed. Attorneys for Sholom Rubashkin, the former executive at Agriprocessors Inc., sued U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement for “the immediate processing and release of agency records” related… Read more »