Authorities said at the time that “Rattini, Barclay and Miami-Luken sought to enrich themselves by distributing millions of painkillers to doctors and pharmacies in rural Appalachia, where the opioid epidemic was at its peak.”
Rattini died in Colorado last year, court records say, and Barclay pleaded guilty to a much lesser charge of misprision of a felony, a count his lawyer, William Hughes of Porzio Bromberg & Newman, said accused Barclay of not reporting a felony. Barclay knew he was innocent, but if a trial took place and he was convicted he was likely to spend the rest of his life in prison, said Hughes, who represented Barclay along with Dayton attorney Mark Chilson.
With the guilty plea, he was to avoid time in prison or fines.
“Going to trial always has its risks and you’re being offered a chance for no jail time, no fine, you’re 74 years old, a chance to get on with your life,” Hughes said. “What do you do?”
But that guilty plea was rejected by U.S. District Court Judge Matthew McFarland late last month who instead tossed the case against him and others after the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio requested it be dismissed.
“It is the duty of every prosecutor to constantly review facts, evidence and the law, as each may evolve in any case. The United States Attorney determined that a Stipulation of Dismissal is the appropriate course of action in this matter,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
Barclay has lived a law-abiding life and didn’t do anything wrong, Hughes said. The attorney said that the DEA had access to Miami-Luken’s information and Barclay had requested guidance from them, but was told that they were “business decisions” the company would have to make.
The case was dismissed against all the defendants in the case including a pharmacist in Kentucky and a pharmacist in West Virginia.
‘The case has taken over our lives’
In a letter to McFarland, Barclay recounted being charged with a crime and how it impacted his life.
“Nobody should have to go through what my wife and I have gone through the last three years,” he wrote. “I was falsely accused of conspiring to sell drugs illegally in West Virginia. I was indicted in July 2019, over two years after I had retired with nearly 25 years at Miami-Luken.”
He was always the accounts receivable manager and in 2012 assumed the responsibility of assisting the CEO with compliance, he said. He said he never had any authority to stop shipments or designate an order as suspicious. He was indicted because the government needed a “scapegoat” due to the publicity of the opioid problems in West Virginia, he said.
He said he never made more than $60,000 a year at Miami-Luken.
“The case has taken over our lives for the last three years, and who knows how many of my remaining years it took out of my life,” he wrote in his letter to the judge. “Since July 2019, the last thing I think of before I go to sleep and the first thing I think of when I wake up is this case. I have lived in this area for almost 50 years and I am left wondering how to regain my reputation.
“Every day -- and I mean every day -- this case has consumed our lives,” Barclay wrote. “If we’re not talking about it, we’re thinking about it.”
Hughes said that he appreciates U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio Kenneth Parker, who assumed office late last year and filed for the case to be dismissed. It would have been easier for Parker to do nothing, Hughes said, but instead, he took action.
“What U.S. Attorney Parker did was both profound and highly ethical,” Hughes said. “It is the ideal of what the U.S. Justice Department should always strive for because the politically safe course of action was to do nothing and let the jury system work it out. Nobody would have questioned that. But what he did was look at it and said ‘this is wrong’ and ordered the case dismissed.”
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