By Jon King/jking@whmi.com


Final arguments have been rescheduled in the pre-trial hearing for two men charged with the deaths of 11 Livingston County residents.

Barry Cadden and Glenn Chin were charged with second degree murder last year by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office for their roles in running the New England Compounding Center. Cadden was a part-owner and Chin was a supervising pharmacist at the facility in which authorities say lax conditions were allowed to infect steroids produced there that led to the 2012 outbreak that killed more than 100 people nationwide and sickened nearly a thousand others.

Following multiple days of testimony held over a two month period, final arguments in the case had been scheduled for today. But due to the COVID-19 crisis, they have been reset for April 8th with 53rd District Court Judge Shauna Murphy scheduled to issue her opinion April 22nd whether or not to send the case to trial in circuit court. Those dates, however, are pending on the state of the courts and whether they will be reopened at that point.

Previous testimony included former NECC pharmacy technicians about routine violations they observed in the pharmacy’s clean room, including falsified cleaning logs, insects inside the clean room, rusty equipment and drugs that had not been tested being shipped out anyway. Cadden and Chin remain in custody at the Livingston County Jail, where they were transferred late last year from federal facilities in Pennsylvania in which they were serving time from a previous conviction in the case.