When They Came For Sholom Rubashkin...

In a Jewish Weeks's article---"Is Rubashkin The Victim In Agriprocessors Verdict?" ---attorney Nathan Lewin, a former lawyer for Agriporcessor, shows how feds targeted Sholom Rubashkin and turned his case of bad operational management in the crime of the century.  By tracing this case we can see that Sholom Rubashkin was first convicted, and then tried.

Now, with Rubashkin convicted, his many enemies ---the unholy cabal of big labor, PETA, and moral marauders of the kind of Hekhsher Tzedek ---have reasons to celebrate. We should also mention special zeal of the prosecutors in this case. As we posted before, Sholom Rubashkin was the first person to be prosecuted under the law dating 1921 about delays in payments to cattle farmers. The federal judge on her end did not interfere with mentioning in court of the details of the immigration case, which she ruled herself, should be tried separately. On the other hand she was very strict about NOT allowing in court any mentioning of the fact that Sholom Rubashkin is a son of a Holocaust survivor, she also forbade the defense team to bring up Rubashkin's charitable activities.

The meaning and the impact of this case could be best understood in light of a book recently published by a prominent legal scholar and defense attorney, Harvey Silverglate -- Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. One of the main points of the book is that criminalization of citizens' actions, which were done without presence of criminal intent, make us all potential targets.

Attorney Alan Dershowitz wrote in the introduction to the book (emphasis ours):

T h e  av e r a g e  p r o f e s s i o n a l in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has
likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior. The volume of federal crimes in recent decades has increased well beyond the statute books and into the morass of the Code of Federal Regulations, handing federal prosecutors an additional trove of vague and exceedingly complex and technical prohibitions to stick on their hapless targets. The dangers spelled out in Three Felonies a Day do not apply solely to “white collar criminals,” state and local politicians, and professionals. No social class or profession is safe from this troubling form of social control by the executive branch, and nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional democracy hangs in the balance. 

Watch here Harvey Silverglate explain the situation. 

Omnipotent man-eating government machine triggered into a deadly action by malevolent attacks of lowly instigators, vested in the victim's demise, and a hapless victim caught in a trap. This is not the America we were dreaming of. But this is the America we live in now.

We were silent when they came for Sholom Rubashkin.

Who will speak up when they come for us?

posted by: jrtelegraph

Comments

[Meir Chein]

Thanks for the article.

Wow. An English proverb says that "No good deed goes unpunished".

But what about the energetic, young person's daily life full of wonderful, sacrificial, charitable, great G-dly deeds (MITZVOS)?

Is that is the reason why Reb Sholom Rubashkin has to be imprisoned and terrorized by the Feds?

This is an unheard of misjustice in the country which
boast to be the champion and citadel of FREEDOM.

Sincerely,

Meir.

[jrtelegraph]

Eric,

Thank you for adding this informative detail. It is duly noted and added to the post. We still suggest that one needs to know significantly more about the case. This is not about the right vs. the left, this is about our freedom.

Cheers, and thank you for you input.

-- jrtelegraph

[Eric Geller]

It would have been appropriate to mention that Nathan Lewis, the author of the Jewish Week article defending Mr. Rubashkin, is a former lawyer for Agriprocessors. I think that is all you need to know about the integrity and reliability of his defense of Rubashkin in this article.