DENVER -- Jury selection opened Tuesday in the trial of a Nebraska meat packer charged with selling substandard beef to the nation's school lunch program and the Defense Department.
Jury selection in the trial of Rudolph 'Butch' Stanko of Gering, Neb., took most of the day as U.S. District Judge Sherman Finesilver questioned prospective jurors about their knowledge of the case.
Defense attorney Robert McAllister, who tried unsuccessfully to have the case moved from Colorado, said the defense was beginning with a strike against it after all potential jurors indicated some knowledge of the case from news reports.
Stanko, who closed his Cattle King Packing Co. operation in the Denver area and sold his Beef Processors of Gering plant, is on trial for one count of conspiracy and six other counts of violating federal meat regulations, including selling tainted beef to the federal government for school lunches.
Stanko and former Cattle King president James T. Bambrick, who has not gone to trial, received $4.2 million from the U.S. departments of agriculture and defense in 1983 for the sale of allegedly adulterated and tainted meat.
The charges, each carrying a maximum penalty of three years in prison and a fine of $1,000, include two counts of the sale of adulterated meat to private companies, two counts of accepting returned meat without reinspection, one count of mislabeling and one count of misdating.
Also on trial are the Cattle King company, which closed in 1983 after the case received nationwide publicity on NBC-TV's 'First Camera' show, and employee Gary Waderick.
Two other employees, including former plant manager Henry L. Stanko Jr., a cousin of Butch Stanko, pleaded guilty earlier. Two federal meat inspectors were acquitted on charges and three others still face trial.
