Conigliaro, Carter Seek New Trial

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

Lawyers for two of the defendants in the criminal probe of a deadly fungal meningitis outbreak argued today for a hearing on their plea for a new trial on charges they conspired to defraud the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Appearing before U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns in his Boston, Mass. courtroom the attorneys for Gregory Conigliaro and Sharon Carter argued that repeated testimony at their trial should have been excluded. They cited dozens of trial transcripts referring to a recycling plant, run by Conigliaro, that abutted the New England Compounding Center.
The two were among 14 people indicted following a two year prove of the deadly 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak that ultimately took the lives of more than 100 patients in more than 20 states.
(The hearing was not included on a daily list of sessions scheduled for the federal court each day.)
Conigliaro was vice president and part owner of NECC, which produced the contaminated drugs triggering the outbreak. Carter was a manager at the Framingham, Mass. company.
The lawyers argued that the testimony about the recycling plant never showed that it was the cause of the contamination and, thus, should have been excluded.
Stearns took the matter under advisement.
Stearns previously acquitted the two of the charges, but they were reinstated by the First Circuit Court of Appeals.
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