Prosecutors Oppose Separate Conigliaro Trial

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

Charging that a separate trial for the former part owner and vice president of a defunct drug company is unjustified and a waste of time, federal prosecutors say Gregory Congilario should be tried in October along with eight other defendants.
In an 11-page filing in U.S. District Court in Boston, Mass, prosecutors said that Congiliaro, the former vice president of the New England Compounding Center "has failed to demonstrate any basis for severance.
Conigliaro was one of 14 indicted in late 2014 following a two year federal probe of the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak which was caused by fungus tainted drugs shipped by NECC to health facilities across the country. The drugs sickened nearly 800 patients killing at least 76 of them.
Lawyers for Conigliaro asked for a separate trial contending that trying his case along with the other remaining defendants would be prejudicial because while he is charged with a single count of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, other defendants are facing multiple charges.
Noting that Congliaro's role at NECC was to oversee regulatory compliance, prosecutors said that the former NECC vice president played a key role in trying to convince the FDA that NECC was not a drug manufacturer but a pharmacy subject only to state regulation.
"Conigliaro made these false representations to not only the FDA, but also several regulatory agencies from different states across the country," prosecutors charged.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys George Varghese and Amanda Strachan said Conigliaro should go on trial on Oct. 2 as scheduled along with others facing the same conspiracy charge. They said giving him a separate trial would force them to present much of the same evidence all over again.
Two codefendants already have gone on trial and are now serving lengthy federal prison sentences. Both Barry Cadden, the former NECC president, and Glenn Chin, a supervising pharmacist, were convicted on racketeering and mail fraud charges. A majority of the jurors in the Cadden trial also voted to convict him on the charge of conspiracy to defraud the FDA, but a unanimous verdict was required.
Cadden and Chin were also cleared in two separate trials of second degree murder charges.
While Conigliaro's lawyers said their client would be severely prejudiced if tried with the others, Varghese and Strachan said he played a critical role at the now defunct Framingham, Mass. company.
"Conigliaro's conduct is inexplicably intertwined with NECC's fraudulent drug production by virtues of his lies to regulators about what NECC was doing," the filing states.
In a separate filing today Strachan and Varghese asked U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns to reject a motion by the remaining defendants to limit evidence of patient harm stemming from the outbreak at the October trial. They argued that the evidence was "direct and intrinsic" and necessary to show evidence of a conspiracy,
They wrote that they do not intend to introduce autopsies of the victims or to have next-of-kin of victims testify.
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