By Walter F. Roche Jr.
Prosecutors and the lawyer for a key witness in the criminal probe of the deadly fungal meningitis outbreeak are once again seeking an indefinite delay in his sentencing.
In a three-page filing today in U.S. District Court in Boston, Mass. the opposing lawyers are asking U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns to postpone indefinitely the sentencing of Robert A. Ronzio.
Ronzio was the chief prosecution witness in a series of criminal trials stemming from the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak.
Ronzio had been scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 18, but the joint motion asks that the session be postponed until the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals acts on a closely related case involving two co-defendants, Gregory Conigliaro and Sharon Carter.
All three were employed by the New England Compounding Center, the company that shipped contaminated methylprednisolone acetate all over the country, eventually ending the lives of more than 100 patients.
It was Stearn, who on June 11, 2019 acquitted Conigliaro and Carter of the charge that they conspired to defraud the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Ronzio, who was NECC's sales director, already had pleaded guilty to the same charge in a plea deal with prosecutors.
The pending appeal seeks to have the acquittal reversed and the jury's guilty verdict against the two restored.
Stearns previously rejected a nearly identical motion for an indefinite postponement when he set the Aug. 18 date. There have now been over a half dozen delays in Ronzio's sentencing.
Contact: wfrochejr999@gmail.com
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