Parnell habeas corpus petitions are about to be heard by 11th Circuit panel of judges

The 11th Circuit Court Of Appeals was scheduled to hear that five-year habeas corpus motion from Stewart Parnell but pulled it back.

The second highest court in the land promises to re-assign the Stewart Parnell case shortly. 

The Atlanta-based court appears ready to wrap up the Habeas petitions from Stewart Parnell and his brother, Michael Parnell.  Both filed so-called Motion 2255 actions challenging their convictions and sentences for their roles in a deadly Salmonella outbreak from peanut butter products.

In the five years that the brothers have pursued federal Writs of Habeas Corpus, the procedure has yet not given them much encouragement. However, that may change as petitions for both men will likely be heard soon at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Stewart and Michael Parnell were convicted by a 2014 jury trial in Albany, GA. Both were associated with the now-defunct Peanut Corporation of America, which was found responsible for the 2008-09 multistate Salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds and killed several.

For their multiple felony convictions, Steward Parnell was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison, and Michael Parnell was sentenced to 20 years.

The Parnells filed petitions for federal Writs of Habeas Corpus under 18 U.S.C. §2254, which is for those in federal custody. The Latin “habeas corpus” translates into “you have the body.” A petition for the writ claims someone is being detained against their constitutional rights. A Habeas Corpus petition claims the arrest, sentence, or trial violated constitutional law, making imprisonment unlawful.

Ineffective assistance of trial counsel is the most common issue cited in Habeas Corpus petitions, and both Parnell brothers have raised that claim.

Stewart was first to file on Sept. 6, 2019. His attorneys wrote: “Stewart Parnell owned the Peanut Corporation of America (“PCA”), a peanut processing plant in Blakely, Georgia – a small town in southwest Georgia 48 miles southwest of Albany.

“In 2014, Mr. Parnell was convicted of conspiracy, introducing adulterated and misbranded food into interstate commerce, interstate shipments fraud, wire fraud, and obstruction of justice from a salmonella outbreak tied to PCA. After an unsuccessful direct appeal, United States v. Parnell, 723 Fed. Appx. 745 (11th Cir. 2018), Mr. Parnell now shows that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to move for a change of venue or to strike jurors for cause who knew about allegations of deaths resulting from the salmonella outbreak.”

Michael Parnell filed his Habeus Corpus petition about a month later.

After filing their petitions, the Parnells each scored a victory when the Magistrate Judge decided the issues raised were worthy of an evidentiary hearing. Magistrate Judge Thomas Q. Langstaff for the Middle District of Georgia presided over the hearings in late May 2021 in the same Albany, GA, courthouse where the Parnells were convicted.

Federal marshals delivered the Parnells to the evidentiary hearings, and they could trade witness and exhibit lists. But after it was over, Langstaff ruled against their petitions in his recommendation to the Middle District of Georgia, and the trial judge, W. Louis Sands, agreed.

The final denial by the Middle District of Georgia left an appeal to the 11th Circuit as the next option. Stewart Parnell’s petition arrived first and cleared one big obstacle by winning a motion “for a certificate of appealability.”

While “granted in part,” U.S. Circuit Judge Andrew L. Brasher has permitted Stewart Parnell to appeal on two critical issues:

1.) whether the distinct court erred in determining that Parnell could not establish a presumption of jury prejudice, based on adverse pretrial publicity, under Skilling v. United States; and

2.) whether a showing of presumed jury prejudice under Skilling operates to establish both prongs of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim based on the counsels’ failure to move for a change of venue.

With Rouse & Copeland in Savannah, GA, Amy Copeland is Stewart Parnell’s attorney for the Habeus Corpus petition. Her next deadline for filing the appellant’s brief is June 26, about two weeks from now.

Michael Parnell’s appeal to the 11th Circuit was filed on May 26. Two Virginia attorneys, Elliott M. Harding and William J. Dinkin, represent him.

Before taking his petition to the Atlanta court, Michael Parnell triumphed in getting his conviction record corrected by the Middle District. At the suggestion of his Bureau of Prisons (BOP) case manager, Parnell’s Introduction of Adulterated Food offenses was corrected to “Introduction of Misbranded Food.”

It was Nov. 10, 2008, when the CDC’s PulseNet staff first noted a small and highly dispersed multistate cluster of 13 Salmonella Typhimurium isolates with an unusual DNA fingerprint or pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) pattern reported from 12 states. By  April 20, 2009, 714 people in  46 states were confirmed with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Typhimurium associated with the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) facility in Blakely, GA. Nine deaths were a direct result of the outbreak, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Criminal charges related to the outbreak were filed in 2013 against five PCA managers and executives. Only the Parnell brothers remain in federal custody.
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