Specialty lab exec gets 10-year prison term for 11 deaths from tainted steroids in Michigan
A Michigan judge has sentenced the former executive of a Massachusetts specialty pharmacy to at least 10 years in prison for the deaths of 11 people in 2012
HOWELL, Mich. — A Michigan judge sentenced the former executive of a specialty pharmacy to at least 10 years in prison Friday for the deaths of 11 people who were injected with tainted pain medication, part of a meningitis outbreak that affected hundreds across the U.S. in 2012.
Barry Cadden's sentence for involuntary manslaughter will be served at the same time as his current 14 1/2-year federal sentence for crimes tied to the outbreak. As a result, he's not expected to spend any additional time behind bars — a deep disappointment for relatives of victims.
“This is hard because Mother's Day is just two days away,” said Gene Keyes, whose 79-year-old mother, Sally Roe, died 30 days after getting a tainted injection.
“Barry Cadden is responsible for the disintegration of our family. Our family has been torn apart,” Keyes told Livingston County Judge Matthew McGivney.
McGivney followed a sentencing agreement negotiated by Cadden's lawyer and the Michigan attorney general's office. Cadden had been charged with second-degree murder but pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter in March.
“You have altered the lives of these families and robbed them of time with their loved ones," the judge said.
More than 700 people in 20 states were sickened with meningitis or other debilitating illnesses and at least 64 died as a result of tainted steroids shipped to pain clinics in 2012 by New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Massachusetts, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But Michigan has been the only state to prosecute Cadden and a
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