By Jon King / jking@whmi.com


One of the two men charged with the deaths of 11 Livingston County residents says prosecutors have not proven his actions led to their deaths.

Glenn Chin is facing trial in Livingston County Circuit Court on second degree murder charges filed last year by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office for his role in running the New England Compounding Center. His co-defendant in the case is the former part-owner of the NECC, Barry Cadden. According to a motion filed last week, Chin’s attorney, James Buttrey, contends that the prosecution has not identified any act on Chin’s part that caused the deaths of the 11 victims, who were injected with steroids that had been contaminated with deadly meningitis bacteria.

Chin was the supervising pharmacist at the facility and previous testimony from employees indicated that tests were skipped and production was rushed in 2012 when the facility started dealing with a mass of orders. One of them, Owen Finnegan, said the frenzy of activity resulted in untested steroids being labeled using older lot numbers that had been tested. He also said that when Chin was told that more time was needed to properly test all of the vials, he shrugged his shoulders and reiterate that the boss, Cadden, wanted the orders shipped as fast as possible. Another former NECC employee, Steven Haynes, testified that he also talked to Chin about the lax state of production and testing, to which he responded, that the company had lawyers to deal with that.

Buttrey’s motion, however, contends that testing indicated the steroids were sterile when they left Chin's control and that the contamination must have been caused by other employees who handled the drugs. It also labels the case as one of wrongful death caused by product liability and concludes there is no precedent for murder charges in such a case, asking Livingston County Circuit Court Judge Michael Hatty to reverse the decision of 53rd District Court Judge Shauna Murphy, who found in August there was probable cause to send the charges against Chin and Cadden to trial.

Ryan Jarvi, Press secretary of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, declined to comment on the motion and said they plan to respond in court. Chin’s motion to quash the charges is set for this Thursday, December 3rd, while a similar motion by Cadden is set to be heard on December 10th.