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posted by martyb on Friday April 21 2017, @11:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the real-reason-to-celebrate-4/20 dept.

Annie Dookhan's falsification of drug lab tests has become a reason for over 21,000 people to celebrate. Massachusetts will drop 21,587 cases in the largest single dismissal of convictions in U.S. history:

Massachusetts formally dropped more than 21,000 tainted drug convictions Thursday that were linked to a disgraced state chemist who in 2013 admitted to faking test results.

It's the largest single dismissal of convictions in U.S. history, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Thursday's dismissals by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had been expected after several district attorneys on Tuesday submitted lists of 21,587 cases they said they would be unwilling or unable to prosecute, The Associated Press reports.

Previous Coverage:
Massachusetts: Tens of Thousands of Drug Convictions to be Overturned After Fraudulent Lab Tests.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 22 2017, @02:50AM (3 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 22 2017, @02:50AM (#497759) Journal

    The person who stabbed the prison guard shouldn't have survived the experience. He should have beed dropped, on the spot, and any medical attention delayed for "security reasons" for days, or weeks.

    People shouldn't go to prison unless they are dangerous, and once there, they should be handled like dangerous animals.

    If I need to spell it out, there should only be a few thousand people in prison in this country. At MOST tens of thousands. The system is broken, and we need it fixed. Only people guilty of heinous crimes should be sentenced to prison. Small time pot heads should never see prison. Petty thieves should never see prison. Your average "criminal" should be serving his home community in some fashion, working off his debt to his fellow citizens. Ideally, that petty criminal should be working for the people he victimized. If not working for his victims, he should at least be paying them restitution.

    Prison is wrong in most cases.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:00AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @03:00AM (#497765)

    Small time pot heads should never see prison. Petty thieves should never see prison. Your average "criminal" should be serving his home community in some fashion, working off his debt to his fellow citizens. Ideally, that petty criminal should be working for the people he victimized. If not working for his victims, he should at least be paying them restitution.

    Spot on. No victim, no crime, no need for prison time. Where there is a victim, the criminal is tried and sentenced to restitution for his victim (not "the state"); he can also pay for the costs of his capture and conviction after making his victim as whole as possible.

    The person who stabbed the prison guard shouldn't have survived the experience. He should have beed dropped, on the spot, and any medical attention delayed for "security reasons" for days, or weeks.

    This is what a bootlicking authoritarian would say, supporting executions by neglect without any shred of due process.

    Only people guilty of heinous crimes should be sentenced to prison.

    Why should the victims pay to support the life of their victimizer? Exile or execution. Paying for one bullet, or a bus ticket and a makeshift raft, is a hell of a lot cheaper than a prison.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 22 2017, @02:08PM (1 child)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday April 22 2017, @02:08PM (#497910) Journal

      Bootlicking authoritarian. I like that. How 'bout I plant my boot far enough up your dumb ass that you can taste the leather, then pull it out and let you lick the shit off of it. Did the prison guard get your fucking "due process"? No? The prisoner deserves less consideration than he gave the guard.

      "Exile or execution". Hmmmm. So - we have a problem child, and we banish him to - where the fuck we gonna send him, exactly? Export him to Mexico? Canada? Mozambique? WTF does that solve? We ship our criminals to any place on earth, because we are to candy-assed to deal with them, and all the earth learns that we are beneath contempt. Besides which, we cannot deport a citizen. Not possible. We can do a lot of things to a citizen, but we can't deport him. Execution, you say? Hmmmm - as cynical as I am, I am cognizant of the fact that people do make mistakes. A murder, in the heat of the moment? Dude has never had so much as a traffic citation, and he kills some sumbitch during an argument? So - uhhh - we execute him? Probly not. We punish him for making a mistake, then send his ass home to support his family, so we don't have to support his family. We give him x number of years in prison, then turn him loose, maybe with some supervision.

      You badmouth me as an authoritarian, then you only see two fit punishments for a guy who has fucked up - deportation or execution?

      Jesus Christ, man - go out and buy you a moral compass. I mean, you don't even have a broken one, do you? Go get one.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:08PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 22 2017, @06:08PM (#498006)

        Lots of people take the extreme route of punishing the guilty in the most extreme ways. It is a terrible policy that leads to very bad consequences. It erodes the morality of everyone involved. It satisfies the emotional need for vengeance, but when you give into such impulses then yes, it does lead to authoritarian horrors. I wouldn't call you a boot licker, but you're way too cozy with authoritarian practices on occasion.