Lawyers in the trial of Glenn Chin, the supervisory pharmacist said to be involved in the 2012 meningitis outbreak that killed 64 people and sickened more than 700 others, have delivered their closing arguments as Chin faces possible conviction for second-degree murder as well as racketeering and mail fraud charges.
Read more: Cleanroom QC Agent: Pharmacist Told Me to “[Expletive] Off”: https://www.cemag.us/blog/2017/10/cleanroom-qc-agent-pharmacist-told-me-expletive
Chin’s trial comes six months after Barry J. Cadden, former co-owner and president of the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass., was acquitted of murder in March 2017. Cadden was facing 25 counts of second-degree murder. The jury heard nine weeks of testimony and then deliberated for five days before presenting their verdict. Cadden was convicted of racketeering and fraud charges in June 2017, and was sentenced to nine years in prison. Chin has plead not guilty to his own charges.
A federal prosecutor in the Boston courthouse told jurors on Oct. 20 that Chin “acted with a depraved heart” as he knowingly producing non-sterile drugs.
“Make no mistake, Glenn Chin is not sitting in this court room because he was negligent or careless,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Strachan said. “He is here because of his deliberate choices.”
The prosecution has argued that Chin allowed his cleanroom workers to engage in lax cleanroom practices, such as forging cleaning logs, horseplay in the clean facility, and filling prescriptions under fake names such as “Mickey Mouse.”
Read more: Pharmacist’s Email: Cleanroom Practices “A Disaster Waiting to Happen”: https://www.cemag.us/blog/2017/10/pharmacists-email-cleanroom-practices-disaster-waiting-happen
Chin’s defense team has argued that Barry Cadden, currently serving his time in low-security federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania, is responsible for all of the corner-cutting that took place at the NECC, and Chin was merely following his boss’s orders.
Meanwhile, Strachan said, “There’s no such thing as a conspiracy of one. And the individuals who carry out crimes at their boss’s behest are just as guilty.”
The defense team did not call any witnesses as they rested their case. Instead they read from the transcript of the prosecution’s closing argument in Cadden’s trial, which stated that the compounding center was “Barry’s baby.”
The jury is expected to begin deliberations on Monday, Oct. 23.
