Witness: RX Dumped Drugs Down Sink

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

Boston- A key prosecution witness testified today for the first time that he saw one of his colleagues dumping drugs down a sink just as the word had surfaced that their employer was suspected as the source of a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak.
The surprise testimony in U.S. District Court brought a protest from the lawyer for the worker accused of disposing of he drugs. His client, Christopher Leary, and five other former employees of the New England Compounding Center are facing charges ranging from racketeering to mail fraud for their role in the deadly 2012 outbreak first detected in Tennessee.
Leary's lawyer, Paul V. Kelly, charged that prosecutors failed to inform him of the new testimony. He noted the witness, Joseph Connelly, had not disclosed the dumping incident during the prior trials of two co-defendants.
"If a witness presents new information prosecutors have an obligation to disclose it," Kelly told U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns, after jurors had been sent home for the day.
Assistant U.S. Attorney George Varghese acknowledged that prosecutors are obliged to to disclose so-called exculpatory evidence which would tend to clear a defendant, but argued the same precedent does not apply to incriminating evidence.
While downplaying the importance of the disclosure, Stearns advised prosecutors that "going forward" in the ongoing case such information should be disclosed.
Connelly, an NECC pharmacy technician, said he witnessed the drug dumping in early October of 2012 after employees of the New England Compounding Center were told the facility was being shutdown in the wake of the ongoing federal probe.
Connelly said Leary, a licensed pharmacist, was dumping bottles of drugs down a sink and there was a cart beside him "with more bottles to be dumped."
He said supervising pharmacist Glenn Chin was crying following a company meeting in a break room where workers were told of the imminent closure. Other employees, Connelly said, were busy cleaning the facility.
State investigators have testified the facility was heavy with the smell of bleach when they arrived later that week.
Chin already has been convicted of racketeering and mail fraud and is serving an eight year sentence in a federal prison in Pennsylvania. NECC President and part owner Barry Cadden is serving a nine-year sentence following his conviction on similar charges.
The 2012 outbreak, caused by heavily contaminated steroids injected into unsuspecting patients across the country sickened some 778 people, killing 76 of them. The six now on trial were among 14 indicted following a two year federal probe of the outbreak.
Kelly, Leary's lawyer, charged that the new Connelly testimony followed multiple sessions with federal prosecutors, sessions in which witnesses "are being prepared." The testimony, he added, was "highly prejudicial to my client."
Under questioning from Assistant U.S.Attorney Amanda Strachan, Connelly said he didn't think the NECC employee, Annette Robinson, charged with monitoring the facility for possible contamination was competent and that she never told employees what they were supposed to do to correct any problems.
Connelly, who was on the witness stand for the second day, provided detailed testimony on drugs prepared at NECC and signed off on by some of the six defendants.
They included drugs shipped the day they were produced and before promised testing could be completed. He said that as the company business expanded rapidly in 2012 "more mistakes were being made."
He said he even learned that one drug order he had personally prepared had "popped," meaning it was found to be contaminated. Another worker, he said, mistakenly filled an order for a solution of sodium bicarbonate with potassium chloride, a mistake if not detected, could have resulted in serious patient harm.
He said yet another worker sent out vials only filled with water and containing none of the ordered drugs.
"There were a lot of discrepancies," he said, adding that morale in the clean room where he worked was very low.
He recalled stating to a co-worker,"We're overtaxed. Someone's going to get hurt. We're going to get shutdown."
Under cross examination, Connelly was questioned about his brother Scott, who worked as a pharmacy technician at NECC even though he had surrendered his certification in the midst on an unrelated state investigation. He said he told Cadden his brother was a good technician but unreliable.
Scott Connelly has already entered a guilty plea to nine counts of mail fraud and is awaiting sentencing.
Contact: wfrochejr999@gmail.com