Thousands of Massachusetts drug cases to be dismissed after lab scandal

In Massachusetts, someone has made a colossal mistake. Close to 20,000 cases are getting thrown out the door because of one person, Annie Dookhan.

Close to 20,000 Massachusetts criminal drug cases are set to be dismissed because of a scandal involving a former state chemist who admitted faking tests, civil liberties activists and prosecutors said on Tuesday. It will mean the largest number of drug cases tossed out in U.S. history due to one person, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Rogue chemist Annie Dookhan pleaded guilty in 2013 to tampering with evidence during her nine years working at a state crime lab in Boston. The scandal shook the foundation of the state's criminal justice system.

Her method of testing narcotic substances was by looking at it. Literally, just looking at it. All in an effort to make herself seem more efficient to the lab she worked for.



County district attorney Daniel Conley goes on to say;

U.S. Thousands of Massachusetts drug cases to be dismissed after lab scandal By Scott Malone,Reuters 19 hours ago Sign in to like Reblog on Tumblr Share Tweet Email By Scott Malone BOSTON (Reuters) - Close to 20,000 Massachusetts criminal drug cases are set to be dismissed because of a scandal involving a former state chemist who admitted faking tests, civil liberties activists and prosecutors said on Tuesday. It will mean the largest number of drug cases tossed out in U.S. history due to one person, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Rogue chemist Annie Dookhan pleaded guilty in 2013 to tampering with evidence during her nine years working at a state crime lab in Boston. The scandal shook the foundation of the state's criminal justice system. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in January ordered prosecutors across the state to dismiss the vast majority of convictions tied to that lab, where Dookhan identified evidence as illegal narcotics even without testing it, in an effort to make herself seem more efficient. "Today is a major victory for justice and fairness, and for thousands of people in the commonwealth who were unfairly convicted of drug offenses," said Matthew Segal, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, which represented many of the defendants during the appeal process. "The victims of this crisis waited far too long for justice. It shouldn't have taken years of litigation by the ACLU, public defenders, and pro bono lawyers to address this stain on the Commonwealth's justice system," Segal said. Prosecutors in Massachusetts' Suffolk County, which includes Boston, said on Tuesday they had opted to stand by the prosecution of just 1.5 percent of the cases they had brought involving Dookhan. "The average defendant has more than 60 entries on his record,"

Now I know this has got to be a punishable offense, but the question is what type of conviction could she face?

What do yall think?

Source

She potentially ruined thousands of innocent lives.
An example needs to be set as this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.
I suspect that not only are many tests tampered with but the protocols for using their equipment, scheduled maintenance and cleaning etc are not followed in many labs.
Why? It saves money and who the heck is going to know?

Well when you don't read the directions, cut corners, and skip in line just to seem "efficient" that's when you'll goof hard, and be forever known as "a stain on the commonwealth's justice system" OUCH. Should have made better and more thorough choices!

I feel so bad for all those who will now have the extra annoyance of having their records and names cleared.

-Alee

a reply to: Asktheanimals

I don't mean to make this thread drift but I've seen a similar incident happen

Exactly, the sad reality of this is, is that things like this happen everywhere. For example; I use to work for a private company that did explosives screening, kind of like TSA but on a much larger, behind the scenes operation. We had one employee saying he screened everything and followed the proper protocol. However one of our screened export shipments had traces of explosives in a pharmaceutical shipment. Keep in mind though that we had an account with Lockheed Martin and we actually dealt with explosives on a daily basis. After that happened we had a full blown audit by Homeland security, it was a big deal and they went through hours of CCTV footage and found out that he wasn't screening even half the shipments. Fired, and company fined, a LOT.

She probably got a lot of innocent people in jail and let some bad ones off. Now, a lot of people who are actually guilty will be set free too. Boy, one person can sure mess up a lot of people's lives. Remember, the criminals who are now free may commit more crimes too.

originally posted by: rickymouse
She probably got a lot of innocent people in jail and let some bad ones off. Now, a lot of people who are actually guilty will be set free too. Boy, one person can sure mess up a lot of people's lives. Remember, the criminals who are now free may commit more crimes too.

Theres some ppl in MASS. right now on the down low sweating it hard because their name was on the discovery packet and now dudes/chics are free to walk the neighborhood again! Id bet on it.


-Alee

a reply to: NerdGoddess

for some strange reason it makes me think Massachusetts will be the next Chicago, if you know what I mean.

a reply to: slapjacks

She should get 20 years in maximum security.

originally posted by: IgnoranceIsntBlisss
a reply to: slapjacks

She should get 20 years in maximum security.

Multiply that by 20,000 for each life potentially ruined directly, and add another year for each family member who may have suffered. Then you'd be in the ballpark I was thinking..

a reply to: slapjacks
I remember this lady from when the story broke in 2013. They knew what she had done and to how many cases way back then. I thought this was all resolved back then as well.

The article says it best, it shouldn't have taken years... So what is the reason it took so long to move forward? That is left unsaid.

As to what punishment she should face... add up the sentences of everyone wrongly convicted because of her crimes and apply that to her with no way to reduce the sentence. Seems fair to me.

a reply to: Noncents

As to what punishment she should face... add up the sentences of everyone wrongly convicted because of her crimes and apply that to her with no way to reduce the sentence. Seems fair to me.

Sounds fair enough to me as well.

On the other hand, if I were her, I'd be scared for my life.

a reply to: slapjacks

Not sure on how you picked up on this, but this is a really old case.

On 22 November 2013, Dookhan was sentenced to three to five years imprisonment and two years probation by Judge Carol S. Ball in Suffolk Superior Court, after pleading guilty to crimes relating to falsifying drug tests.

Carol Ball has since retired and was a very liberal sentencing judge.

Not only were thousands of old cases thrown out, but the entire drug lab was shut down. Now there is only one state lab in Eastern Massachusetts testing the substances. This has lead to an enormous back log and thousands of more cases have been thrown out due to want of prosecution.

To blame this debacle on one person is nuts though. There was literally no supervision. She was processing 5 times as many cases as any other chemist at that time. No one said boo. The prosecutors knew exactly who to call when they needed a quick turn around on the testing.

Since this scandal another also broke in Massachusetts where a crackhead was stealing some of the coke she was supposed to be testing.

Wonder how much this is going to cost Massachusetts in cival lawsuits?

a reply to: slapjacks

Throw the #ing book at her!

originally posted by: Asktheanimals
She potentially ruined thousands of innocent lives.
An example needs to be set as this is probably just the tip of the iceberg.
I suspect that not only are many tests tampered with but the protocols for using their equipment, scheduled maintenance and cleaning etc are not followed in many labs.
Why? It saves money and who the heck is going to know?

I suspect something similar is happening in every single state. Catching something like this is difficult, and even internal reviews aren't going to find it.

wild story.
been following it a bit.

she used to get #ed up off drugs she took from the lab too.

i will try to find the article but she said she would do methamphetamines and coke and # on the weekends and it was always the best quality # she could take from the lab.

a reply to: Aazadan

Wrong, internal review would have absolutely have caught her. She processed 5x as many cases as the next most productive chemist in the state. That alone should have brought this entire thing to a grinding halt.

But I do agree that it would be easy to get away with if one were a bit smarter about it.

The law in Massachusetts was also partially to blame. There was a statutory exception to the hearsay rule for a chemist's certificate. This lead to the introduction of the drugs and their certification as being illegal narcotics of a certain type, without a witness to be cross-examined. It wasn't until the Supreme Court decision in Crawford v. Washington and its progeny that ultimately lead to this practice being eliminated. That is how the crime was divulged, through cross-examination by one of those bastard defense attorneys.

a reply to: TobyFlenderson

Not if there's a profit motive to process them, and it's company policy to look the other way. I'm sure her supervisors knew what was going on.

a reply to: TinySickTears

That's actually another Massachusetts drug lab scandal. No real reason for Ms. Dookhan's crimes was ever really stated other than her need to be praised and liked.

a reply to: Aazadan

In this instance, there was no profit motive. It's a state lab, owned and operated. The only motivation her superiors had was ineptitude of the highest order. After the scandal broke a complete audit was done of the facility. There were so many things wrong that it was completely shut down.