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posted by martyb on Friday January 27 2017, @01:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the wheels-of-justice-grind-slowly dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @05:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @05:29PM (#459570)

    It kind of makes me wonder wtf happened to her that made her act this way. Perhaps a bad trip on some illegal substance? Or maybe to many in-through-the-out-door one night stands? Maybe she's just incredibly fugly and can't get any? Is there a punishment to fit this crime?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @05:58PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @05:58PM (#459593)

    Life in prison in Syria.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @06:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @06:12PM (#459599)

    That's what I can't figure out. What was her motive here? Was she too lazy to conduct the tests? Were the defendants in these cases personal enemies of hers? Is she a sadistic monster that delights in causing suffering for its own sake? None of these guesses seem realistic.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @06:34PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @06:34PM (#459617)

      Maybe this would be more realistic. Prosecutors want to use drug labs that give a lot of positives, right? So, she fakes positives to drive business. Happy customers = repeat customers.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @07:23PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @07:23PM (#459661)

        You may be onto something here. Though, if a lab consistently produces positives to the point that the prosecution notices, the defense would also notice and use this discrepancy to undermine the evidence. However, if it was more of an under-the-table sort of transaction, it might be possible.

        DA: Hey, Ms. Dookhan. I don't have enough evidence to get a conviction in this particular case. Could you "find some" for me. Here's an envelope full of money.

        After she does this once, both parties have dirt on each other which would prevent either one from defecting. I do hope that the prosecutors involved in these cases are also investigated.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @08:57PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @08:57PM (#459704)

        Very possible. My doctor requires a drug screen a few times a year. The test usually costs about $95, but they switched labs to one in Texas that charges $3400 for the same test. I informed the doctor about this, they said don't pay them and they switched back to the other lab. I did a little digging and found employee complaints that it was a boiler room type of business.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Desler on Friday January 27 2017, @07:02PM

      by Desler (880) on Friday January 27 2017, @07:02PM (#459640)

      A twisted sense of justice and indifference.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @07:02PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @07:02PM (#459641)

      It is the result of a defective brain but it's a lot more common than your hypotheses.
      Authoritarian [google.com] zealot [google.com]

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday January 27 2017, @07:12PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday January 27 2017, @07:12PM (#459654)

    It's not fugliness; read the article. They have a photo of her and she's pretty attractive actually.

    I think the other poster is correct: she must have an authoritarian mindset. The kind of mindset that leads to death camps.

    Unfortunately, this woman proves you can't judge a book by its cover. Just because a woman has a pretty face doesn't mean she isn't really a monster.

    • (Score: 2) by dry on Saturday January 28 2017, @06:39AM

      by dry (223) on Saturday January 28 2017, @06:39AM (#459828) Journal

      Unluckily human nature comes in. Most men would rather fuck the beautiful bitch then the nice 300lb fugly. This is reflected in their interactions.