Michigan AG: Cadden Must Face Jury

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

Charging that the directives of a former drug company owner directly led to the deaths of 11 state residents, the Michigan Attorney General is asking that state's highest court to deny the owner's recent appeal of 11 second degree murder charges.
In a 32-page filing with the Michigan Supreme Court this week, Attorney General Dana Nessel said the arguments raised by attorneys for Barry J. Cadden are without merit and it should be up to a jury to determine his guilt or innocense.
Cadden and co-defendant Glenn Chin have been charged with second degree murder in the deaths of 11 Livingston County patients who died after being injected with a contaminated steroid produced at the the New England Compounding Center, the company where Cadden was president and Chin was a supervising pharmacist.
Cadden's appeal charges that the disrict and circuit courts erred in binding him over for trial on the charges. Chin has filed a similar appeal.
"Both direct and circumstantial evidence indicated that Cadden knew of and contributed to the unsafe conditions at NECC's clean room," the filing states.
Charging that the unsafe and risky practices began in 2012 as NECC ramped up production, the fiing states that Cadden not only knew of the unsafe practices and in some cases ordered them.
Citing testimony of former NECC employees,the brief states that the increased production led to "corners being cut" and NECC becoming sloppier.
Cadden distributed drugs "under the false representation" that they had been compounded under proper standards when the clean rooms where the drugs were produced were "inexcusably susceptible to mold and contaminates," the filing states.
Noting that NECC did ultimately issue a recall notice for the fungus riddled drugs, the filing states, "For 11 patients, it was too late."
puting the contention of Cadden's lawyers that the prosecution failed to identify a specific act that led to the deadly 2012 outbreak, the brief states that Cadden was not only responsible for the unsanitary condition in the clean rooms but was also complicit in what went on there.
"Cadden's directives are the acts that caused the deaths in this case," the filing concludes.
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