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The Free Thought Project reports
After years of injustice, thousands of people wrongfully convicted on drug charges in Massachusetts will finally have their convictions overturned. The ruling centers on drug lab tests that were falsified by a state-employed chemist named Annie Dookhan.
"The state's highest court on Wednesday [January 18] ordered prosecutors to drop a large portion of the more than 24,000 drug convictions affected by the misconduct of former state drug lab chemist Annie Dookhan, issuing an urgent call to resolve a scandal that has plagued the legal system since 2012."
Dookhan was imprisoned in 2013 after being charged with a suite of crimes relating to her years-long career of deceit, where she falsified tens of thousands of reports to jail innocent people. She would mark results as "positive" for illegal substances without actually testing them, even adding cocaine to samples when no cocaine was present.
At [Dookhan's] sentencing, Judge Carol S. Ball stated, "Innocent persons were incarcerated, guilty persons have been released to further endanger the public, millions and millions of public dollars are being expended to deal with the chaos Ms. Dookhan created, and the integrity of the criminal justice system has been shaken to the core."
[...] The Massachusetts high court ruled that each [of 24,391 defendants] had a right to a hearing, but the cost and logistics of doing so would be unfeasible.
"The court said district attorneys across the state must "exercise their prosecutorial discretion and reduce the number of relevant Dookhan defendants by moving to vacate and dismiss with prejudice all drug cases the district attorneys would not or could not reprosecute if a new trial were ordered." The cases affected by the ruling include people who pleaded guilty, were convicted, or admitted that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict them. By vacating the cases, the convictions would effectively be erased...
The court said defendants whose cases aren't dismissed should receive a notice that their cases had been affected by Dookhan's misconduct. Then, any indigent defendants would receive public counsel to explore requests to vacate their pleas or get new trials.
Related: Are Questionable Drug Tests Filling U.S. Prisons?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday January 27 2017, @04:32PM
I for the most part agree with you, especially for low impact drugs like pot. Heroin addiction however almost invariably turns the addict into a criminal, and often violent, making for a more difficult situation.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday January 27 2017, @04:40PM
If someone becomes a criminal, then you'll have a valid reason to arrest them, but not until then. You can't even assume that all heroine use will lead to addiction. It's certainly not justifiable to ban someone from ingesting something because of what they might do in the future.
(Score: 3, Funny) by mcgrew on Friday January 27 2017, @08:16PM
You can't even assume that all heroine use will lead to addiction.
I don't know, I was pretty addicted to Wonder Woman.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Informative) by KilroySmith on Friday January 27 2017, @06:13PM
>>>Heroin addiction however almost invariably turns the addict into a criminal,
Well, so would Tobacco addiction, if tobacco were illegal and the addict had to pay street prices for it. Instead, they can go down to the corner store and buy a pack of smokes for $5. Where's the incentive to become a criminal for $5?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday January 27 2017, @08:19PM
Or alcohol. Lots of people get violent when they drink, or drive away from the bar and kill someone.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @06:13PM
most violent robbers are not addicts. addicts are weak and sick. they usually beg or hustle some non violent way, sometimes including theft, but usually not violent theft. the "people" doing carjackings and kick doors are just criminals that are too stupid to sell drugs or other crimes that involve math or discipline. they also represent a smaller percentage of the criminals. they could easily be apprehended and locked away if treasonous pigs weren't so busy stealing from actual working people.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday January 28 2017, @12:35AM
Spoken like someone who knows exactly 0 heroin addicts.
Of course any addict can be driven to crime when that's their only means of financing their joy (whether it's drugs or something else,) but heroin makes people slow and soft and hazy, not violent and aggressive.
Many of the earlier generation of addicts were doctors themselves. This was true of morphine and also of heroin. These doctors did not become violent criminals - they continued to practice and in many cases were effective and respected for years without anyone discovering their weakness. When heroin was discovered, no one realized how crazy addictive it was at first, and many doctors of that era were actually junkies too. Since the drug was legal and they had easy access to it that wasn't such a big deal.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday January 28 2017, @02:02AM
I speak from the experience of a particular acquaintance in addition to what I've read from others.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek