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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 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.