Another West Texas jury will be called next April for a second criminal trial of Paul Kruse, the retired Blue Bell Creamery president from Brenham, TX.
The first jury, empaneled Aug. 1 this year, was not able to reach a unanimous agreement, ending in a mistrial after it broke 10-to-2 in Kruse’s favor.
The second jury trial is the third swing for government prosecutors who are out to convict Kruse for his actions in 2015 involving a deadly listeriosis outbreak that shut Blue Bell down and required the recall of all its ice cream products then on the market.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) took the first strike at Kruse on May 1, 2020, when it accused Kruse of felony charges of conspiracy and fraud only to see them all dismissed because they lacked an indictment from a federal Grand Jury.
DOJ lawyers, however, righted that slip-up by Oct. 20, 2020, when they obtained a Grand Jury indictment of Kruse and filed it with the same U.S. Circuit Court in the Western District of Texas in Austin that dismissed their first attempt.
Then a couple of days before the first trial, DOJ dismissed one count of the indictment “in the interests of justice.” That left the conspiracy charge and fraud charges for the first jury to decide.
Blue Bell settled its criminal liability with the government with monetary payments, leaving Kruse as the only individual to face criminal charges because of the 2015 outbreak.
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