The case of a Massachusetts veteran home where 76 residents died in one of the country’s deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks in a long-term care facility landed in court on Tuesday as two former top officials at the facility appeared in Hampden Superior Court in Springfield in an effort to have their criminal charges dismissed.

Lawyers for former Holyoke Soldiers’ Home Superintendent Bennett Walsh and former Medical Director Dr. David Clinton argued on a number of motions to dismiss the case, according to the Associated Press.

The accused officials argued that the state had not met its burden of proof for charging them with 10 counts each, including abuse, neglect, or mistreatment of an elderly or disabled person.

“We don’t think anyone here should be blamed criminally for anything. The blame here belongs to the virus, not with anyone who worked in that nursing home,” Michael Jennings, a lawyer for Walsh, said.

On the other hand, prosecutors argued that the decision by Walsh, Clinton, and other facility leaders to cram residents who were positive for the coronavirus into the same unit as those with no symptoms was negligent.

The court set the next date for the end of October.

Walsh and Clinton say that both of them are being scapegoated by state officials. Walsh’s lawyers also argued that his client’s effort to alert state officials relatively early in the crisis helped save lives by allowing the state to mobilize the National Guard.

But an independent report commissioned by the state does not agree with the arguments of the defence. According to the conclusions in the report, the “utterly baffling” decisions made by facility administrators allowed the virus to spread unchecked in March 2020 as the pandemic took hold in the US.

At least 76 veterans died from the virus over 11 weeks, and many more residents and staff were sickened.

Earlier this month, veterans home workers filed a class-action suit against several members of the facility’s former leadership team, including Walsh and Clinton.

The workers allege they were forced to care for sick and dying veterans, sometimes after testing positive themselves, in “inhumane conditions.”

The workers argued in the lawsuit filed in federal court that Holyoke Soldiers’ Home administrators initially ignored guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for containing the virus and lied to state officials about measures they were taking to protect residents and staff once the first veteran tested positive in March 2020.

Walsh, who resigned in October, declined to comment. Clinton strongly denied the allegations, AP reported.