Goverment Seeks 35 Year Chin Sentence

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

Stating that the pain he caused has "no foreseeable end," federal prosecutors are asking a federal judge to impose a 35-year prison sentence on a pharmacist who played a key role in a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak.
In a 51-page filing in U.S. District Court in Boston, Mass., the prosecutors said actions by Glenn A. Chin caused "widespread harm and unimaginable suffering."
The filing comes just days before Chin's sentencing following his conviction last year on charges of racketeering, conspiracy, mail fraud and violations of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act.
Included in the filing were details of the suffering some of the victims have endured.
If Chin were to get the 35 year sentence it would be nearly four times the sentence U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns imposed on codefendant Barry J. Cadden. Cadden who was convicted on similar charges, already has begun serving the nine year sentence Stearns imposed. Prosecutors had also asked for Cadden to serve a 35-year sentence.
In fact a substantial portion of the government's sentencing memorandum criticizes Stearns decision in the Cadden case. Stearn will also decide Chin's sentence on Wednesday.
Chin and Cadden were  among the 14 indicted in December 2014 following a federal probe of the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak, which took the lives of some 76 patients. The outbreak was caused by contaminated drugs shipped by the New England Compounding Center, the now defunct Framingham, Mass. firm where Cadden and Chin worked.
Cadden was president and part owner of NECC and Chin ran the clean room where the contaminated drugs were produced.
In a footnote in the filing, the prosecutors disclosed for the first time that NECC's drugs sickened some 793 patients, some 35 more than previously reported.
"The court was wrong in concluding that the patients receiving injections of NECC's contaminated drugs are not victims of the rackteering and mail fraud," the filing states, adding that the patients were "clearly victims."
"They trusted that the drugs would relieve and not cause pain," the filing by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Amanda Strachan and George Varghese states.
The prosecutors also argued that Stearns' decision in the Cadden case grossly understated the loss caused by Cadden and Chin. Citing decisions in other cases, they said the loss caused by Cadden and Chin should include all the money paid to NECC from 2006 to 2012, or $132.8 million not just $1.4 million.
"No one would have bought any of NECC's drugs had they known the truth about NECC's operations. NECC's drugs were worthless," the filing states. "NECC's entire manufacturing operation was a fraud."
The filing recounts the trial testimony last Fall in which former NECC's employees described insanitary conditions at NECC, the lack of testing of its drugs, the use of outdated and expired ingredients and the shipping of drugs before tests could even be completed.
Citing the the "seriousness of Chin's crimes," the prosecutors said, "a lengthy period of incarceration is warranted here."
"The suffering that resulted when 14 strains of fungi swimming in Chin's methylprednisolone acetate made their way into patients is immeasurable," the memo states.
The prosecutors specifically cited the impact statements submitted by victims from Michigan, Tennessee and Indiana. Joan Peay, a Nashville, Tenn. victim, said she still suffers from the after effects of two bouts of fungal meningitis and the debilitating anti-fungal treatments.
"The worst is the damage to comprehension," Peay wrote. "It doesn't sound like much but it has been terrible."
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