Microbiologist found guilty

[juju]

I found this story pretty interesting. It's from Science Magazine.

LUBBOCK, TEXAS--Microbiologist Thomas Butler was found guilty yesterday on 47 of 69 federal charges stemming from his report last January that 30 vials of plague bacteria had gone missing from his laboratory here at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Forty-four of the convictions involved charges that Butler defrauded the university. But Butler was largely cleared of allegations that he illegally transported plague bacteria into and around the United States and then lied to FBI agents when he reported some vials missing.

On 14 January, Butler told university officials that some of his plague samples had disappeared, triggering a bioterror scare that ended after Butler wrote a statement in which he admitted to accidentally destroying the vials (ScienceNOW, 21 January 2003). Butler has since retracted the confession, and his defense team argued that a manipulative FBI agent essentially dictated the statement to the exhausted scientist. During its investigation of the case, FBI discovered evidence that Butler had illegally transported plague samples and committed fraud.

The jury acquitted Butler of all seven charges that he illegally hand-carried plague samples into the United States from Tanzania in early 2002 and then broke the law again by transporting cultured bacteria to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Fort Collins, Colorado, and to a U.S. Army research center in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Butler's lawyers argued that he wasn't aware he was breaking the law. Butler was convicted, however, on three of four counts of shipping the microbes back to Tanzania in a Federal Express box marked "laboratory materials."

In the end, jurors were also convinced that Butler had defrauded Texas Tech by cutting secret "shadow" contracts with two pharmaceutical companies. Under the twin agreements, half of the per-patient fee that the firms paid to run clinical trials was sent to the university. Unbeknownst to the university, however, the other half went directly to Butler's bank account, which the prosecution said amounted to embezzlement. But jurors found Butler innocent of a related tax charge. Butler declined to comment.

Observers are divided on the verdict's implications for scientists, some of whom decried the government's prosecution and contributed money to Butler's defense. Because Butler was convicted on only a few of the mishandling charges, "this is not a strong verdict one way or the other," says Texas Tech law professor Larry Cunningham, who has been following the case. But 2003 Nobel laureate Peter Agre says the message is "chilling." The government has thrown as many charges at Butler as possible in order to make some stick, says Agre, who likens the case to "an episode from the McCarthy era." No sentencing date has been set.

How about that? Now the FBI is harrassing scientists. I find this all pretty sad. But I guess that's the price you pay for living in fear. Sorry, I mean "freedom".