Attorneys trade barbs in opening of NECC pharmacist's murder trial
A federal prosecutor argued the lead pharmacist for a defunct Framingham compounding company acted with a callous disregard for human life when he sent out vials of contaminated medicine, but the pharmacist’s defense attorney said his client is not responsible for murdering 25 people in the deadly 2012 meningitis outbreak.
Glenn A. Chin faces 76 federal indictments, including 25 counts of second-degree murder. Assistant U.S. Attorney George P. Varghese showed photos of the 25 victims on a monitor inside the 7th floor courtroom at John J. Moakley U.S. Courthouse, including the late Circuit Judge Eddie Lovelace of Kentucky.
“Judge Eddie’s death was a tragedy, but it was not an accident,” Varghese told the jury of 11 women and four men as the trial got underway yesterday. “Judge Eddie was killed by that man, Glenn Chin … who engaged in conduct that was so dangerous, so extraordinarily dangerous and risky, there was a reasonable likelihood Judge Eddie was going to die, and he did.”
Varghese said Chin was responsible for overseeing a clean room at the New England Compounding Center in Framingham that engaged in improper sterilization, improper testing, did not wait for test results, and used expired drugs in an effort to prioritize “profits over people.”
The outbreak, caused by injectable steroids contaminated with mold, killed 64 people and sickened more than 700 others across the country. NECC owner and founder Barry Cadden was found not guilty of 25 counts of seconddegree murder earlier this year, but was convicted of fraud and racketeering and sentenced to nine years in prison.
During his trial, Cadden’s attorneys said Chin was responsible for supervising the clean room. Chin’s lawyer Stephen Weymouth countered yesterday, “It was always Barry Cadden’s decision, he decides what the rules are. It was all him, all him. Glenn Chin was not part of a conspiracy, not part of an enterprise, he was an employee working as hard as he could until it all fell apart.”