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ALBANY, Ga. (AP) --
Before federal marshals led him from the courtroom en route to prison, possibly for the rest of his life, Stewart Parnell apologized years after his company's peanut butter spawned a deadly outbreak of salmonella poisoning.
The former Peanut Corporation of America owner had remained publicly silent in 2009 after authorities traced salmonella blamed for killing nine people and sickening 714 to his plant in rural southwest Georgia. He refused to testify when called before a congressional hearing, and likewise never took the witness stand during the criminal trial that led to his conviction in U.S. District Court a year ago.
A judge Monday sentenced 61-year-old Parnell to 28 years in prison. It's the harshest criminal penalty ever for a U.S. producer in a food-borne illness case and a span his attorneys say might as well be a life sentence. It came down after Parnell, in a shaky voice, spoke to those he had harmed.
"It's just been a seven-year nightmare for me and my family," Parnell told a courtroom filled with families of children who survived violent illnesses and elderly adults who died after eating his company's peanut butter. "All I can do is come before you and ask for forgiveness from you and the people back here. I'm truly sorry for what happened."
Ernest Carter of Chicago, whose grandmother died after snacking on peanut butter crackers linked to Parnell's plant, called the apology "too little, too late."
And though Parnell escaped his maximum possible punishment - 803 years in prison, which Judge W. Louis Sands called "inappropriate" - Carter and other victims' relatives applauded his sentence.
"It should be enough to send a message to the other manufacturers that this is not going to be tolerated anymore and they had better inspect their food," said Randy Napier, whose 80-year-old mother in Ohio was also among the nine who died.
The salmonella outbreak in 2008 and 2009 triggered one of the largest food recalls in U.S. history and cost Peanut Corporation's customers - companies that used its peanut products in everything from snack crackers to pet food - an estimated $143 million.
U.S. Attorney Michael Moore of Georgia's Middle District, whose office prosecuted the case, called it "a landmark with implications that will resonate not just in the food industry but in corporate boardrooms across the country."
Bill Marler, an attorney who specializes in food-safety cases and represented many of the salmonella victims in civil lawsuits, said: "The fact that he was prosecuted at all is a victory for consumers."
Parnell and two co-defendants also sentenced Monday were never charged with any deaths or for making people ill. Instead, they were charged with defrauding corporate customers such as Kellogg's, which turned the company's peanuts and peanut butter into finished products.
A federal jury convicted Parnell of knowingly shipping contaminated peanut butter and of faking results of lab tests intended to screen for salmonella. In all he was found guilty of 67 criminal counts.
His brother, food broker Michael Parnell, was also convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison Monday. The plant's quality control manager, Mary Wilkerson, got five years.
Defense attorneys said they plan to appeal both the sentences and convictions.
Tom Bondurant, one of Stewart Parnell's attorneys, said 28 years would amount to a life sentence for his client.
At Peanut Corporation's plant in Blakely, Georgia, federal investigators found a leaky roof, roaches and evidence of rodents at the plant, all ingredients for brewing salmonella. They also uncovered emails and records showing food confirmed by lab tests to contain salmonella was shipped to customers anyway. Other batches were never tested at all, but got shipped with fake lab records saying salmonella screenings were negative.
Emails prosecutors presented at trial showed that Parnell once directed employees to "turn them loose" after samples of peanuts tested positive for salmonella and then were cleared in another test. Several months before the outbreak, when a final lab test found salmonella, Parnell expressed concern to a Georgia plant manager, writing in an Oct. 6, 2008, email that the delay "is costing us huge $$$$$."
Parnell's company filed for bankruptcy shortly after it was shut down in 2009.
Members of Parnell's family pleaded for leniency. His mother, Zelda Parnell, told the judge both of her sons "have suffered for years."
Three deaths linked to the outbreak occurred in Minnesota, two in Ohio, two in Virginia, one in Idaho and one in North Carolina.
NEW YORK (AP) —
The visit of Pope Francis to the United States will also mark the return of Brian Williams to the airwaves on Tuesday following his suspension from NBC News and demotion for misleading viewers about his role in news stories.
The former NBC "Nightly News" anchor is to begin his new role Tuesday as an anchor for breaking news stories on MSNBC, covering the arrival of the pope in Washington.
Network news divisions have been gearing up for pope coverage, with Lester Holt, George Stephanopoulos and Scott Pelley set to anchor special reports on Tuesday's arrival on NBC, ABC and CBS.
But Williams' return is attracting the most notice. Except for an interview with Matt Lauer on "Today," he's been off the air since his suspension from "Nightly News" in February. He was caught telling a false story about his coverage of the Iraq War, and lost his "Nightly News" job after an NBC investigation turned up other instances of exaggerating his role.
Although Williams won't have a regular daily show on MSNBC, he's expected to anchor during busy news periods a couple of times a week. The network has ditched its daytime opinion programming in favor of news coverage that emphasizes its ties to NBC News.
NBC News Chairman Andrew Lack said Williams is one of the best in his generation for covering live, breaking news on television.
"I'm confident that he deserves a second chance and I'm confident that Brian is as good at his job as he was last year at this time," Lack said. "I think viewers will engage with good work. It's not going to happen overnight ... We're playing a long game here."
MADISON, Wis. (AP) —
Warning that the Republican presidential race has become too nasty, Scott Walker exited the 2016 campaign on Monday and urged others to quit, too, and "clear the field" so someone can emerge to take down front-runner Donald Trump.
The announcement marked a dramatic fall for Walker, who was struggling to generate money and enthusiasm after surging into the race's top tier earlier in the year. He will return to his job as governor of Wisconsin, where his term runs through 2018.
"Today, I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race so that a positive conservative message can rise to the top," Walker said in a news conference. "I encourage other Republican presidential candidates to consider doing the same so the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive conservative alternative to the current front-runner."
Walker said that is "fundamentally important to the future of the party and more importantly to the future of our country."
One of the last Republicans to enter the race, Walker joined former Texas Gov. Rick Perry as one of the first to leave it. He found himself unable to adjust to Trump's popularity or break out in either of the first two GOP debates. Both candidates warned of the billionaire businessman's influence on the GOP as they stepped aside, although neither called him out by name.
"Sadly, the debate taking place in the Republican party today is not focused on that optimistic view of America," Walker said. "Instead, it has drifted into personal attacks." Walker's sons, Matt and Alex, attended his speech. They each had taken a semester off from college to campaign with him.
Anthony Scaramucci , one of Walker's top fundraisers, expressed hope that other struggling candidates will heed Walker's call to distill the field.
"I think what he did shows real leadership," Scaramucci said. "He's sending a signal to the low single-digiters — the new 1 percenters, if you will — that it's time to go, for the good of the party."
Walker's departure prompted a good riddance from Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president, reflecting the hostility between the governor and organized labor.
"Scott Walker is still a disgrace," Trumka said, "just no longer national."
Walker's fall was in many ways more dramatic than Perry's.
He was thought to be a leader in the big pack for much of the year and built a massive national organization, with paid staff spread across the country, that dwarfed many of his rivals in scale and scope.
"I don't think he made any really big mistakes," said Iowa state Sen. Mark Costello, who endorsed Walker earlier this year. "But people lost enthusiasm."
Walker, 47, tried to appeal to religious conservatives, tea party conservatives and the more traditional GOP base. He cast himself as an unintimidated conservative fighter who had a record of victories in a state that hasn't voted Republican for president since 1984.
Like Perry, however, Walker found little room for such a message in a race dominated by Trump.
Trump tweeted in response to Walker's decision, "he's a very nice person and has a great future."
Walker came to the race having won election in Wisconsin three times in four years, and having gained a national following among donors and conservatives by successfully pushing his state to strip union bargaining rights from its public workers.
Walker pointed to those Wisconsin wins, in a state that twice voted for Barack Obama as president, as signs that he could advance a conservative agenda as the GOP's White House nominee.
He called himself "aggressively normal" and made a splash in January with a well-received speech before religious conservatives in Iowa.
Groups backing Walker went on to raise $26 million, tapping wealthy donors whom Walker had cultivated in his years as governor and during his successful effort to win a recall election in 2012.
Walker's primary super PAC, called Unintimidated, had just begun spending for a major push in Iowa — reflecting the governor's last-ditch strategy to place all of his chips on that first-to-vote state.
The super PAC told federal regulators in a filing Friday that it had spent more than $1.6 million boosting Walker this year, most recently on a $50,000 mailing to Iowa voters. It will now return what it hasn't spent to its donors.
Many of Walker's troubles were not of Trump's making.
He took days to clarify whether he supported ending birthright citizenship. He initially showed interest in building a wall between the U.S. and Canada, only to laugh it off as ridiculous. He also declared he wasn't a career politician, despite having held public office for 22 straight years.
After his fade in polls, Walker took a more aggressive approach, promising to "wreak havoc" on Washington. He vowed to take on unions as president, just as he did as governor, outlawing them for federal government workers.
But the anti-union policy proposal fell flat; announced in the days before the second GOP debate, it wasn't mentioned at all — by Walker or anyone else — on stage.
While only Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush had more super PAC money available to boost their chances in the original 17-person 2016 Republican field, Walker struggled to generate money for his official campaign.
He has yet to report fundraising totals to federal regulators, but top fundraisers and donors have said his plummeting poll numbers left them struggling to generate cash.
Walker called his senior staff to the governor's mansion in Madison on Monday to review recent polling, in which he was mired at the bottom, and his campaign's finances.
"I'm disappointed," said Stanley Hubbard, a billionaire media mogul from Minneapolis who had backed Walker's campaign. "He's a good man and would have been a good president."
As word spread of his decision to exit the race, Republican operatives in Iowa working for other campaigns were already making plans to contact state lawmakers who had committed to support Walker.
Walker had assembled a campaign organization in every one of Iowa's 99 counties and had a number of state lawmakers committed to him.
Cliff Hurst, one of Walker's New Hampshire co-chairs, was already planning to shift to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's campaign.
He said he knew about three days ago that "it was over" and had been discussing an endorsement of Rubio as of Monday morning, before Walker's announcement became official.