In his coming federal felony trial, Stewart Parnell does not want to hear anything about illnesses or deaths. Attorneys for Parnell, the former president of the now-defunct Peanut Corporation of America, have filed pre-trial motions asking U.S. District Court Judge W. Louis Sands to prevent anyone at the July trial from speaking about the nine deaths and approximately 700 illnesses connected to the Salmonella contamination sourced to PCA in the 2008-2009 outbreak. “Despite the fact that the government’s entire case is premised on the alleged wrongful conduct of obtaining money by false pretenses, it is anticipated that the government will attempt to introduce evidence at trial of an alleged nine deaths and over 700 illnesses related to the allegations that salmonella-tainted peanut products left PCA,” wrote defense attorney Thomas J. Bondurant, Jr., in a pre-trial motion. Bondurant, a former federal prosecutor, points out that the government indictment identifies 11 different former PCA customers as victims who “incurred monetary losses … as a result of receiving from PCA adulterated and misbranded product and fraudulent paperwork associated with such product.” “Notably, the government’s indictment makes no mention of any victims of these alleged crimes other than the eleven customers that were defrauded by this scheme,” Bondurant wrote, adding, “The pleaded harm that resulted from this alleged criminal scheme consists of monetary harm to the customers that the individuals named caused to PCA’s eleven named customers.” Bondurant pointed to the Department of Justice press release at the time of the indictment, which referred to the “victim impact” of the Salmonella outbreak. He said the government cannot provide the jury with any evidence that the illnesses or deaths resulted from the criminal behavior of the defendants and therefore the prosecution will “inject irrelevant and highly prejudicial speculation (in the guise of ‘evidence’) in order to confuse the issues the jury in this case must decide (e.g., whether the individuals listed engaged in any conspiracy to defraud).” The government “seeks to inflame the passions of the jury in the hope that if the jury become angry enough, it will want to convict someone of a crime, no matter what the evidence really shows,” he wrote. Parnell’s defense says the solution is simple — to ban anyone at the trial from talking about deaths or illnesses associated with the outbreak. Parnell, his brother Michael, and former PCA quality control manager Mary Wilkerson are charged in a 76-count federal felony indictment in a case scheduled for trial in Albany, GA, in July. All three were former PCA executives.