SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @04:06PM
Yes, but:
A) The proper analogy between driving and drugs here would be whether possession constitutes a crime, based on intended use. Nobody says owning a car or a motorcycle is unlawful or should be. As anyone owning one can (presumably) have a use for it as intended. There are lots of drugs that one can possess with no rational reason to use as intended. (Or the distribution of which without proper training and licensing constitutes reckless endangerment.) Plus, in the state of Illinois (and I think elsewhere) selling an ATV when the seller know a child will be driving it is unlawful. So your argument is invalidated on its face, as well.
B) For those drugs which require a rational reason to use as intended.... Those licensed to manufacture, prescribe, and distribute them get into a shitload of trouble if they are knowingly manufacturing, prescribing, or distributing them without valid medical reason. So why should the possessor/end user be any different?
C) Ride along on a few OD calls. Face the parent of a teen who just died from a heroin OD. Pay a hospital's budget for a week's worth of Narcan. Then you can have the right to suggest heroin should be street legal, OK?
D) "As in most of the world they are." And as they should be. Before I have to face you and tell you your kid will have permanent brain damage from their experimentation, ok?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @04:35PM
Face the parent of a teen who just died from a heroin OD.
Why isn't the USFDA enforcing proper labeling and purity standards on these products? Oh, right, because they're illegal.
So, so many of your own problems are your own creation. I'll pray for the poor teen, and I'll pray that man Jesus has the mercy I don't have for the parents who voted in such a system. I'll pray that man Jesus has the forgiveness I can't muster for people who have evidence in front of their fucking faces that legal weed reduces opiate deaths and hospitalizations and still vote for prohibition. The teen didn't deserve to be born into such of a fucking stupid society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @04:37PM
D) "As in most of the world they are." And as they should be. Before I have to face you and tell you your kid will have permanent brain damage from their experimentation, ok?
Freedom is more important than safety, so I'd rather take that risk.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Friday January 27 2017, @05:22PM
The hospital could easily pay for a weeks worth of Narcan on the money we spend incarcerating just one person for simple possession.
I would imagine that like many other things, sale to minors would remain illegal. That doesn't mean much to a degenerate on the black market who is going to get years just for having the stuff on him, but if it's perfectly legal to sell to an adult, but 5 years to sell to a minor, it would likely make a huge difference.
What is worse, your child will have permanent brain damage OR your child will have permanent brain damage and he's going away for 5 years as soon as he gets out of the hospital? Oh, and if he ever cleans up his act, we'll make sure this follows him for the rest of his life and keeps him from finding better than a minimum wage job.
And of course, that OD happened in the first place because it was bought on the black market and so was of an unpredictable quality and strength. He thought he was getting the mostly baking soda with a bit of heroin as usual but it turned out to have 3 times the usual amount of heroin in it.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday January 27 2017, @05:35PM
Law enforcement here where I live is facing a huge problem with heroin overdoses. Many of the law enforcement members I have talked to, seasoned veterans of drug enforcement, tell me that it's hard to change their "lock them up" mindset but they are more and more concluding that it isn't addressing the problem, where spending money on things like Narcan (which they now all carry) and education are doing more good with much less money and effort.
Locking up people with drug problems doesn't seem to be changing their mindset, rather fostering an us-vs-them mentality (drug users vs. law enforcement), but Narcan, treatment, and education, with all of us on the same side, does seem to be having measured effects.
I salute our local sheriff, John Ingram [wunc.org], for making a significant difference in people's lives--by helping people instead of pushing them towards prison. That's an extreme stance for me--most of my contact with law enforcement has been overwhelmingly negative--but I genuinely appreciate and acknowledge the efforts of him and of his deputies and detectives.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday January 27 2017, @05:41PM
I recognize that there are rational positions on both sides of the issue, by caring people who genuinely want the best for others.
But I don't believe it's the freedom of people who are in possession of drugs that should be attacked. Rather, the ideas of those who don't understand the potential harm should be addressed. Treatment together with education, when helpful, helps in a long lasting way, whereas locking someone up so that they have more trouble shooting up but still have the same mindset when they are released is more expensive, and helps less.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday January 27 2017, @05:57PM
The analogy is that whether you possess a drug, or a vehicle, upon using what you possess in the usual way, you participate in an inherently risky act that raises cost for everyone, irrespective of whether they use drugs or vehicles regularly (or at all).
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has recently [pbs.org] estimated annual economic and societal harm of over 800 billion dollars owing to motor vehicle crashes.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse similarly estimates [drugabuse.gov] about a 700 billion dollar annual cost related to drug use.
These are similar figures, within 10% of each other, for costs to society in a particular area for people participating in "driving or riding as passengers" and for "people using drugs."
Thus, the costs to society alone are not a reason to threaten every participant in these activities with prison. This should be, but for some reason was not, self-evident.
The analogy that you propose, seeing whether the activities are already criminal (based on intent to drive, ride, or use drugs) to determine whether they should be criminal, is not the most helpful one I have ever seen, as there is a fair bit of tautology involved. The figures that the above-referenced study results produced admittedly did not take intent into account, but then legally, intent isn't taken into account when someone is imprisoned for merely possessing something.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday January 29 2017, @09:09AM
C) Ride along on a few OD calls. Face the parent of a teen who just died from a heroin OD. Pay a hospital's budget for a week's worth of Narcan. Then you can have the right to suggest heroin should be street legal, OK?
D) "As in most of the world they are." And as they should be. Before I have to face you and tell you your kid will have permanent brain damage from their experimentation, ok?
There's no room in the drug culture for amateurs.