Agricultural Personnel Management Program
University of California

3/27/03  News Report -- The Wall Street Journal

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. -- A federal jury swiftly acquitted Tyson Foods Inc. of charges it conspired to staff its poultry plants with illegal workers, dashing the federal government's hopes for a landmark criminal case on immigration enforcement.

The jury deliberated for less than one day after hearing seven weeks of testimony. The government was armed with secretly recorded tapes of midlevel Tyson managers placing orders for illegal workers with federal agents posing as smugglers. But prosecutors were unable to persuade the jury that senior Tyson executives were aware of the scheme, or that there was a corporate culture at headquarters in Springdale, Ark., that encouraged managers to break immigration laws.

"I was appalled the government didn't have more hard evidence," said Barbara Hailey, the 46-year-old church secretary who was forewoman of the jury.

Sandy Mattice, the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Tennessee, said, "We believed we proved the charges." He added: "We are consoled by the fact we did the right thing to bring this prosecution."

The undercover investigation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service focused on Tyson's poultry plant in nearby Shelbyville. The two Shelbyville managers captured on tape pleaded guilty in January. One testified that his superiors were aware of his actions. Another indicted employee, who was a personnel manager at the Shelbyville plant, committed suicide before the trial began.

The jury also acquitted three Tyson managers, whose families broke into sobs as the verdict was read. The most senior of them is Robert Hash, 50, who is on leave from his vice president's post, from which he oversees four of Tyson's poultry processing plants. The others are Gerald Lankford, 64, a retired human-resources manager, and Keith Snyder, 44, who is on leave from his job as a manager at a Tyson plant in Noel, Mo.

The criminal trial was widely watched as a landmark in immigration enforcement. Tyson was the first corporate titan and major U.S. food brand accused of seeking out illegal immigrants to staff its factories, a strategy the government said depressed the wages of the company's legitimate workers.

Tyson had fiscal 2002 sales of $23.4 billion.

Some broad-based business groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, were concerned about the government's plans to have the company, if convicted, forfeit any ill-gotten gains, a punishment usually aimed at dope peddlers.

Such a punishment would have cost Tyson far more than fines, and industry groups worried that the government's position in this case signaled a willingness by the Bush administration to use criminal forfeiture more often against companies. Before the trial, prosecutors initially calculated Tyson's ill-gotten gains at $139 million.

During the trial, Tyson's attorneys described the managers caught up in the government sting as rogues who violated company policy. Among other things, Tyson was one of the first companies to voluntarily adopt an INS computer system for checking the status of potential workers. It had once alerted the government to its suspicions that employees in an Alabama poultry plant were trafficking in fake work documents.

The company's prospects brightened late in the trial when U.S. District Judge R. Allan Edgar dropped 24 of 36 charges, including allegations that Tyson had conspired to smuggle illegal workers.

"It's unfortunate that Tyson Foods and our team members were needlessly subjected to this ordeal," Greg Lee, Tyson's chief administrative officer, said after the verdict was announced.

In 4 p.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading Wednesday, Tyson fell 18 cents to $7.97.

Tyson's attorneys complained to the jury that the company, which hired about 200,000 low-skilled workers during the three years of the government investigation, had done the best it could to hire only legal workers. "It's not the fault of this company there are approximately eight million undocumented workers in the United States," said Thomas C. Green of the Washington law firm Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood, adding: "If the government wants to eliminate all undocumented workers it has to take companies such as Tyson Foods out of this business of figuring out who can work."