United States – In 2012, just a few days after a usual injection for back pain, Donna Kruzich, along with her friend, traveled to Stratford, Ontario, Canada, to witness an end-of-summer theater show.
The 78-year-old woman from Michigan got sick and returned to the house. October early, she was dead.
“Most of the time, she could not communicate with us. She was basically in a coma,” son Michael Kruzich recalled. “We knew she had meningitis — but we didn’t know how she got it.”
Evidence soon emerged: Donna Kruzich was among 64 persons who lost their lives in the US as the outcome of tainted compounds which were made by a compounding pharmacy of Massachusetts. In a courtroom on Thursday, the operator of New England Compounding will come back to Michigan to serve a sentence for involuntary manslaughter, which he had been sentenced nearly 12 years ago for.
Federal Sentencing and State Prosecution
Barry Cadden’s already being imprisoned for 14 1/2 years for federal crimes can be traced back to lab’s unclean conditions that led to a fungal infection outbreak, resulting in meningitis and other neurological illnesses. More than 700 cases of such poisoning were confirmed by the state level in 20 US health state departments.
Michigan is the only state to single Cadden and an important employee—a pharmacist named Glenn Chin—for any deaths.
Plea Agreement and Family Response
Cadden, 57, just signed a plea agreement where she pleaded not guilty to 11 involuntary manslaughter charges. The agreement comes at the cost of removing second-degree murder charges. Furthermore, the prosecution consented to a five-year minimum, which will be served concurrently with the federal sentences.
By this, we mean Kruzich is most likely to spend no more time behind bars, and this leaves Kruzich looking dejected.
“My mother is gone, and Cadden and Chin are responsible. My family would like to see Cadden go to trial. It feels like they’ve run out the clock, and they just want it to be done,” he said, referring to state prosecutors.
By Attorney General Dana Nessel’s words, many of the 11 families involved agreed with the plea agreement.
“We’ve ensured that this plea fits their desire for closure and justice,” she said in a written statement on March 5.
Cadden’s attorney, Gerald Gleeson II, said he had no comment to make ahead of the sentencing. In federal court in Boston in 2017, Cadden said he had his remorse about the “whole range of pain” that came out.
The only high-profile defendant yet to reach a plea deal is Chin, according to court documents filed, and he is awaiting trial in the same Livingston County district court, which is 60 miles (96.5 kilometers or 60 miles) northwest of Detroit. In addition to that, he is serving a 10 ½ year federal sentence.
Pharmaceutical Oversight and Public Awareness
New England Compounding Center (NECC) was based in Framingham, Massachusetts, where it performed its activities in the niche but crucial American healthcare system. Compounding pharmacies are a special class of pharmacies that conceive and produce drugs in specific quantities that may not be available from the larger drug makers.
Infants, by way of illustration, would most likely require a different dose than what the usual adult takes.
“They’re very important,” said Eric Kastango, a pharmacist and industry expert who testified for prosecutors in Cadden’s federal trial. “I don’t think the general public is necessarily aware of what pharmacists do. They know they go into a hospital, and they might need an IV. They might not know who made it or how they made it.”
In 2012, New England Compounding was transmitting pain-relieving steroids among doctors who were plaguing clinics in Brighton, Michigan, to which Donna Kruzish, among others, came for treatment. The lab, however, turned out to be a disaster, so mold could not grow in the manufacturing process.
“The environment quickly spiraled out of control,” the Michigan prosecutors wrote in a court document in May 2022.
Investigators “uncovered a company placing profits over human lives. Barry Cadden was the ‘big boss’ at NECC who made many of the company’s important decisions,” the state said. “He cut corners on safety.”
Crime victims in Michigan can speak in court. Michael Kruxich, 70, stated that he would not be in attendance at the scene on Thursday and had submitted a poem on behalf of his family.
During an interview with The Associated Press, his son said that his mother was a “healthy, happy woman” who adored travel and held the post of treasurer in the Golf Association of the Ann Arbor area.
“I was told 12 years ago that you cannot harm someone more than killing them,” Kruzich said in his poem. “I’ve come to disagree — you can harm them more when justice fails them.”