NECC VICTIMS' KIN URGE LONG PRISON TERM FOR CADDEN
Federal prosecutors are asking a judge to sentence the co-founder of the New England Compounding Center to at least 35 years behind bars for a deadly 2012 meningitis outbreak that killed 64 people as the victims’ families blamed his greed for the suffering and deaths of their loved ones.
“All he was concerned about was himself,” Penny Laperrier said of Barry Cadden in an impact statement centered on the death of her husband, Lyn, who died after receiving a tainted injection.
“Mr. Cadden has destroyed this happy family. He’s a thief. He’s stolen the one person who meant the absolute world to me, who I gave my heart to,” she said. “Not once did Mr. Cadden say how sorry and devastated he was for what he did to my husband … I can’t put into words how much my heart is broken.”
Cadden, the center’s cofounder and president, was convicted earlier this year on dozens of counts of mail fraud and racketeering, but was acquitted on 25 counts of second-degree murder. During his trial, prosecutors argued Cadden and NECC put profits ahead of patient safety.
Karen DeRossett, the granddaughter of Eddie Lovelace of Kentucky, who died after receiving a tainted injection, said Cadden’s crimes “left a family whose heart no longer beats,” writing: “My grandfather was murdered because of another man’s greed.”
Prosecutors say drugs from NECC led to a nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak that sickened more than 800 people and killed 64.
In a memorandum asking for the 35-year jail sentence, prosecutors wrote, “The fungal meningitis outbreak that resulted from Cadden’s criminal conduct was an unprecedented public health crisis in our nation’s history. His choices to deliberately ignore pharmacy regulations showed an unconscionable disregard for the lives of the patients using his drugs.”
Cadden’s lawyers, meanwhile, are asking for a prison term of between twoand-a-half and three years, saying he is not the monster prosecutors have made him out to be. His lawyers also said much of the conduct that directly led to the tainted drugs was under the supervision of Glenn Chin, a supervisory pharmacist at NECC.
“There was no evidence that Mr. Cadden was aware of the vast majority — and certainly the more concerning — compounding practices Mr. Chin was directing, much less that he approved or participated in them,” Cadden’s attorneys wrote in a court filing. “At best, he was willfully blind.”
Cadden will be sentenced on Monday. Chin will go on trial in September.