Chin Seeks 2.5 Year Sentence Reduction

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

The lawyer for a former pharmacist facing a 10.5 year prison term argued today in a federal apppeals court hearing that a U.S. District Court judge erred when he tacked on another 2.5 years to his sentence for racketeering and related charges.
James Sultan, the lawyer for Glenn Chin, the former pharmacist, told a three judge panel that his client had no way of knowing that the drugs he was preparing contained a deadly fungus.
Chin was the supervising pharmacist at the now defunct New England Compounding Center, the company blamed for the 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak which ultimately took the lives of more than 100 patients. Arguing in the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, Mass., Christopher Looney, representing federal prosecutors, said the outbreak victims represented the very definition of vulnerable victims and the 10.5 year sentence should remain in place.
Looney also argued that Chin clearly knew or should have known that the drugs he was preparing could, if contaminated, lead to death or serious injury.
Sultan, however, stated that Chin had been preparing the same drug, preservative free methyl prednisolone acetate, for years without incident.
Chin and co-defendant Barry J. Cadden, are currently awaiting trial in Livingston County Michigan on multiple charges of second degree murder in the deaths of 11 patients who were injected with the same spinal steroid.
The Michigan Supreme Court yesterday denied Chin's motion to have the second degree murder charges thrown out. (See related story) The 10.5 year sentence was set by U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns after the same appeals court concluded that the original eight year sentence set by Stearns was too lenient. But in today's hearing Looney was asked whether Stearns might have over-read their prior ruling.
Looney responded stating that Chin was aware of the risks involved in injecting drugs into a patient's spinal column.
He cited the trial testimony of a former NECC employee who recounted a conversation he had with Chin in which the risks of such injections were discussed.
Following 45 minutes of arguments, the panel took the case under advisement.
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