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 Barry Cadden, the co-founder and former president of the now-defunct
New England Compounding Center, was convicted in March of those
crimes by a federal jury in Boston but cleared of the harshest
charges he faced, second-degree murder.
Prosecutors are seeking at least 35 years in prison for Cadden,
whose conduct they said led to 778 patients nationwide being harmed
after receiving contaminated steroids injections. That includes 76
people who died, they said.
His lawyers counter that prosecutors are seeking to demonize Cadden,
who they said was not convicted of knowing the drugs were
contaminated, just of misrepresenting how they were made. They say
Cadden, 50, deserves around only three years in prison.
Cadden was one of 14 people tied to Framingham, Massachusetts-based
New England Compounding Center (NECC) indicted in 2014 following the
outbreak. He was one of only two people to face second-degree murder
charges.
Prosecutors said Cadden, NECC's head pharmacist, ran the company as
a criminal enterprise that sold substandard and non-sterile drugs
produced in filthy conditions and shipped to medical facilities
nationally for use on unsuspecting patients.
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They said Cadden directed the shipment of 17,600 vials of
contaminated steroids often prescribed for back pain despite knowing
they were made in unsafe conditions, leading to the outbreak.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond; Editing by Scott Malone and Diane Craft)
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