Drug charges dismissed for man wrongly accused of being a drug dealer

A nightmare is over for a 74-year-old accounts receivable manager who was wrongly accused of being a drug dealer in the opioid epidemic.

Jim Barclay of Springboro had worked for nearly a quarter century at Miami-Luken, Inc., a pharmaceutical distributor. He retired from there in 2017 and two years later the Drug Enforcement Administration and federal prosecutors charged him and his former boss with participating in illegal opioid distribution.

The charges were filed in 2019. For the past three years, Barclay has been fighting in federal court to clear his name.

"It was the last thing I thought of before I went to sleep at night and that first thing that I thought of when I woke up in the morning," Barclay said. "The way I was treated when I turned myself in – they were threatening me with 20 years in prison."

He knew if he was convicted, he would likely die in prison.

'The government needed a scapegoat'

William J. "Bill" Hughes, Jr. of Porzio, Bromberg & Newman, and Mark Chilson represented Barclay in court. Hughes said his client was charged under the same statute as a street-level drug dealer.

Hughes said that for the DEA this was a test case on whether they could prosecute wholesalers and distributors in the pharmaceutical industry.

However, he explained that the companies like Miami-Luken have no access to patients, prescriptions or the doctors who wrote them. They only ship drugs to entities registered with the DEA and the DEA can monitor all shipments between distributors and pharmacies in real-time.

"I was indicted because the DEA failed to do their job," Barclay said in a letter submitted in his case in U.S. District Court. "The government needed a scapegoat after the publicity of the opioid problems in West Virginia."

Hughes said the DEA had issued a letter to Miami-Luken and other companies like it saying the companies were responsible not only for knowing what their customers were doing, but what their customers' customers were doing. And it had no basis in law, Hughes said.

Barclay said he reached out to the DEA about half a dozen times seeking guidance when he was acting as Miami-Luken's compliance manager, only to be turned away.

"The DEA's only response was, 'We can't tell you how to run your business, it's a business decision,' " Barclay said.

Barclay said the charges not only consumed his life but affected his whole family. He said he overheard his 6-year-old granddaughter wonder aloud what the authorities would do to her "Pop-Pop."

'So ethical'

Over the course of the case, Hughes said the government prosecutors must have realized the weakness of its case, and Barclay was offered a plea deal with a promise of no jail time or fines. Looking at the alternative of an unpredictable jury trial, Barclay took it.

He entered a plea of guilty to "misprision of a felony," a rarely used statute based on early laws from medieval England tied to a duty to report lawbreakers to the government.

"I never had any authority to stop any order from shipment, designate any order suspicious, or report anyone to the DEA," Barclay said.

Then, in a surprising move, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio Kenneth Parker filed a motion to dismiss the case against all the defendants.

Jennifer Thornton is the spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office. In a statement, she said: “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.”

While Barclay had entered a plea, he had not yet been sentenced. He was able to revoke his plea and the charges against him, his former CEO and Miami-Luken were dropped. That former CEO, Anthony Rattini, died during the course of the trial, Hughes said. The others charged were pharmacy owners in West Virginia and Kentucky.

'I cried like a baby'

"I've been the happiest I've been in three years. We're trying to get our lives back together," Barclay said. "I cried like a baby. I didn't know everything had built up that much."

Hughes praised Parker for reviewing the case, which was initially charged under his predecessor.

"This is what makes U.S. Attorney Parker so profound and so ethical," Hughes said. "The easy thing to do would be to let it go to a jury."

Barclay said he hopes to travel more now and spend some more time with his four grandchildren who are scattered around the eastern United States.

In his letter to the court, he said that no Ohioan should ever be treated the way he was treated, but he said this week that he's not mad about it.

"The case probably took a few years off my life already and to stay mad would just make it worse," he said. "To be angry, it's not going to do me any good at all."

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Drug charges dismissed for man wrongly accused of being a drug dealer