Prosecutors unleashed 54 new charges Wednesday (September 3) against Thomas C. Butler, the plague researcher already accused of having illegally transported vials of Yersinia pestis bacteria from Tanzania and within the United States to Army research laboratories.

Butler, who is scheduled to go to trial in the fall, was arrested in January after reporting that 30 vials of plague bacteria had gone missing from his laboratory at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where he is chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases. At the time, he was charged with 15 felony counts of smuggling and lying to federal officials—charges that, if proven, could mean up to 74 years in prison for the 62-year-old researcher and fines of more than $3.5 million. He is currently free on $100,000 bond.

The new charges filed Wednesday, to which Butler pleaded innocent, include various counts of theft, embezzlement, and fraud. They have nothing to do with plague bacteria transportation and are the product of "count stacking" meant to pressure Butler into pleading guilty, Butler's attorney Jonathan Turley told The Scientist. Many of the new charges are attempts to convert possible infractions of university grant guidelines into criminal offenses, a move that demonstrates the weakness of the case against the researcher, said Turley.

Among the charges is a tax-related count involving a dispute over timing of deductions. Not only did Butler pay the amount under dispute, but he also corresponded openly with the Internal Revenue Service over the issue, his lawyer said. Other charges come from ordinary exchanges over grant money between the researcher and his university, according to Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School.

"These indictments talk about informal grant procedures, which say things like, researchers are 'encouraged' to do something," Turley said. "In my entire career as a criminal lawyer, I have never seen an indictment based on informal university rules. It is other-worldly."

Cindy Rugeley, spokesperson for Texas Tech, said the school did not want to comment on the specifics of the case.

Last Thursday (August 28), Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center President M. Roy Wilson sent Butler a letter notifying him that the office was recommending he be dismissed from the university for cause. The ultimate decision on the dismissal rests with the university's board of regents.

In the meantime, scientists are rallying to Butler's side. Turley joined the defense being run by Lubbock lawyer Floyd Holder after weeks of calls from scientists who insisted the significance of Butler's research demanded attention.

"As an academic, I wish people would speak as highly of me as they do of my client," Turley said. "It's an amazing phenomenon."

A legal defense fund is being operated by Daniel Schwartz of the Washington law firm of Bryan Cave, and members of the National Academies of Science (NAS) Committee on Human Rights wrote to Attorney General John Ashcroft on August 15, protesting Butler's treatment and its potential chilling effect on research.

Nobel Laureate Robert Curl, a member of the NAS panel,  told The Scientist that the human rights committee and individual NAS members are struggling to find an effective way to intervene in the case, an effort made difficult by lack of access to facts.

After one of Butler's former students approached the panel to plead the researcher's case, members deliberated about how to extend their field of concern to the Texas researcher, according to Curl, a professor in the chemistry department at Rice University in Houston. Prisoners of conscience—academic scientists allegedly persecuted by oppressive governments—are what the committee considers within its purview. Wen Ho Lee is the only other US scientist for whom the committee has organized such a protest letter signed by the NAS presidents.

"I have been concerned about what one can do that would be effective," Curl said of the Butler case. "As I see it, it is going to be an abuse of prosecutorial discretion. I don't know the ins and outs of the facts, but Dr. Butler is an apparently respected scientist who got confused about some samples, thought they had disappeared, and reported to his university, and they ran amok."