Justice group slams Rose’s U.S. attorney nomination

Stephanie Rose

A social justice organization has taken a stand against the woman nominated to be the next U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Iowa.

Friends of Justice issued a statement Wednesday describing the nomination of Stephanie Rose for U.S. attorney as “just plain wrong.”

Rose, who has worked in the office since 1997 and currently serves as the deputy criminal chief, is tainted, according to the organization, due to her involvement in the prosecutions of hundreds of immigrants following a massive raid of the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville in 2008.

…Rose helped execute the unprecedented use of expedited trials and exploding plea agreements to convict 306 undocumented workers at the Postville. At the time of the Postville Prosecutions, Rose was not a low ranking member of the office but was in a leadership position as third in charge in the office for criminal prosecutions. Earlier this year, Stephanie Rose was asked about her role at Postville. Even in hindsight, she defended the raid and prosecutions saying “executing the massive operation required amazing effort and a ton of good work.”

… We find it impossible to understand what grounds Ms Rose and her colleagues had for choosing to exercise their prosecutorial discretion in this case with such aggression and lack of respect for due process, other than the requirements of their own ambition. They brought the full force of the USA office to bear on the most vulnerable members of a community with full knowledge that the U.S. Department of Labor was conducting an ongoing investigation of child-labor and wage violations at the plant where these same workers were being victimized…

It is criticism that U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, who recommended Rose for the nomination, has heard and answered previously.

“We looked into this in great detail [while considering the recommendation of Rose for the U.S. attorney post],” Harkin told The Iowa Independent in April. “We contacted lawyers that were involved on the defense side during the hearings in Waterloo. The lawyers, who provided defense during that event, have come out with a letter in support of Rose’s nomination.”

The letter referenced by Harkin was signed by 11 defense attorneys who agreed that Rose took no part in the decisions to conduct the immigration raid in Postville or to fast-track the immigrant workers who were detained as a part of the raid.

…She did not make the decision to fast track these cases, nor did she have any part in how the individuals were to be housed. In addition, she did not make the decision regarding what charges were to be brought against these individuals. With the limited discretion that she had regarding the circumstances and particularly the plea agreements, Ms. Rose exercised her judgment admirably and very favorably to defendants.

Any criticism about Stephanie Rose apparently comes from those who have never had a criminal case with her, and instead represent a blanket disagreement with the Immigration policies and statutes of the United States.

Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas, a federal court interpreter who wrote an explosive essay condemning the handling of the prosecutions resulting from the Postville raid, vehemently disagrees with the defense lawyers who signed the letter in support of Rose.

He provided a brief to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday stating that the “Postville defense attorneys who sent a letter of support for AUSA Rose to Senator Harkin, who recommended her, have no specific knowledge of Rose’s participation in confidential decisions of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and are not in a position to vouch for her as though there had been no problems with the proceedings or their participation in the defense.”

Camayd-Freixas asserts that the defense attorneys who signed onto the letter were “severely criticized nationally by their colleagues for ineffective assistance of counsel, including taking on an average 17 defendants each, failing to provide accurate advice on immigration consequences, and failing to protect the human and due process rights of their clients.”

In his brief, Camayd-Freixas does fail to note that much of the criticism in the wake of the Postville raid and prosecutions was sparked by and nearly without fail reference his own published essay regarding what transpired and his theories as to why. Camayd-Freixas also pulls information from a wide variety of sources, including congressional testimony, to make his case that Rose’s involvement in the fast-track prosecutions was much more integral than has been described and that the overall process was one that usurped due process in favor of expediency.

Although President Obama has accepted Harkin’s recommendation and placed Rose on the nomination list, the Senate Judiciary Committee has not yet scheduled a hearing on her nomination. When the committee does take up the nomination, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley will be involved as a member with seniority.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa continues to be led by Matt Dummermuth, a man on the fringe of the national U.S. Attorney scandal who was nominated by then-President George W. Bush, but has never faced Senate confirmation.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this blog post incorrectly attributed a statement made about U.S. attorney nominee Stephanie Rose to a southern justice organization called Friends of Justice. A different organization also calling themselves Friends of Justice issued the statement on Wednesday night, not the nonprofit group organized in the wake of a 1999 Tulia drug sting in Texas, which denies it made the statement.