Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

&gt; &quot;It&#x27;s unsettling and maddening, because you&#x27;re now going to have a lot of people get released to the street prematurely,&quot; says Middlesex County District attorney Gerry Leone, one of many hoping the state supreme court will curb the releases.<p>That&#x27;s a pretty bad way of looking at this, because it assumes that those people <i>deserved</i> to be behind bars to begin with, and ignores those that didn&#x27;t.<p>How about, &quot;It&#x27;s unsettling and maddening, because we now realize we have a lot of people behind bars without the [proper] due process they deserved&quot;?

<a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2012/12/20/indicted-drug-analyst-annie-dookhan-mails-reveal-her-close-personal-ties-prosecutors/A37GaatHLKfW1kphDjxLXJ/story.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.boston.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;local&#x2F;massachusetts&#x2F;2012&#x2F;12&#x2F;20&#x2F;in...</a><p>The DA is already covering up and defending the prosecutor&#x27;s involvement, saying there is nothing wrong with prosecutors telling Dhookan what test results they needed to get their convictions, in clear violation of proper experimental procedures.

The OP is a bit outdated...Dookhan has since been sentenced to 3 to 5 years in prison:<p><a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/11/22/annie-dookhan-former-state-chemist-who-mishandled-drug-evidence-agrees-plead-guilty/7UU3hfZUof4DFJGoNUfXGO/story.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bostonglobe.com&#x2F;metro&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;22&#x2F;annie-dookhan-fo...</a><p>The system is indeed in turmoil as it has to continue to review a massive number of cases. One of the worser case scenarios has since happened: a man who was freed because of possibly tainted evidence went on to allegedly murder someone<p><a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/05/17/man-freed-because-annie-dookhan-case-charged-brockton-murder/8bWlbdDMmRef2l6yW2KVEL/story.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bostonglobe.com&#x2F;metro&#x2F;2013&#x2F;05&#x2F;17&#x2F;man-freed-becaus...</a>

Minnesota Public Radio reported often about systemic problems in the St. Paul, Minnesota crime lab over the last few years.<p><a href="http://blogs.mprnews.org/cities/2013/08/st-paul-police-crime-lab-back-up-and-running-after-scandal/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.mprnews.org&#x2F;cities&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;st-paul-police-crime...</a><p>It seems those problems are now mostly cleaned up, and there is no particular implication here that a similar problem exists in the state crime lab, but it is a very good idea for citizens to press law enforcement administrators to make sure that crime lab procedures are validated and standardized and checked and rechecked.<p>When I started reading the skeptical literature a decade or so ago, I was astonished to discover that even fingerprint identification is not a well standardized or well validated procedure. And I used to believe that defense attorneys (I am a lawyer by training, although I don&#x27;t practice law) were mostly willfully ignorant of science when they cast doubt on DNA evidence. But now I heartily approve the side-effect of our adversary system of justice, which when it works best should have the &quot;other side&quot; questioning every form of evidence and putting it to the test of rigorous validation. I think too often people trying to solve the problem of crime through the criminal justice system look for quick answers rather than exact answers.<p>AFTER EDIT: This background article link<p><a href="http://badchemistry.wbur.org/2013/05/19/annie-dookhan-and-the-massachusetts-drug-lab-crisis" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;badchemistry.wbur.org&#x2F;2013&#x2F;05&#x2F;19&#x2F;annie-dookhan-and-th...</a><p>from the NPR affiliate in Boston updates the story and is more current than the NPR link kindly submitted here (which is from March 2013 rather than May 2013).

All sorts of &quot;fun&quot; stuff going on here:<p>Another chemist found with no credentials - <a href="http://badchemistry.wbur.org/2013/11/26/mass-chemist-academic-credentials" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;badchemistry.wbur.org&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;26&#x2F;mass-chemist-academi...</a><p>How fast did Dookhan work contrasted to case load: <a href="http://badchemistry.wbur.org/2013/05/15/annie-dookhan-drug-testing-productivity" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;badchemistry.wbur.org&#x2F;2013&#x2F;05&#x2F;15&#x2F;annie-dookhan-drug-t...</a>

I would love to see every single email by DAs that include her name subpoenaed.<p><pre><code> &quot;The report shows that the Hinton lab leaned heavily on Dookhan’s productivity. Supervisors lauded her work ethic and assigned her an increasing share of tests.&quot;[0] </code></pre> We should know what her supervisors and DA were saying in private about her work to her and to one another. There is no way that someone is so much more productive, without anyone ever suspecting wrongdoing and turning a blind eye to all this. Anyone who had ever expressed suspicion of her work, but never raised the issue should be liable for criminal negligence here.<p>[0] <a href="http://badchemistry.wbur.org/2013/05/15/annie-dookhan-drug-testing-productivity" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;badchemistry.wbur.org&#x2F;2013&#x2F;05&#x2F;15&#x2F;annie-dookhan-drug-t...</a>

In one of the threads about this scandal someone said that it would be valuable to send known negative samples to a lab and check which ones come back positive, so that we can investigate whether misconduct was involved. This is basically equivalent to unit testing, since they are known assert(false) tests. Unit tests can be devised to test crime labs, district attorneys, law enforcement officers, judges, etc.<p>This makes me think if maybe this wouldn&#x27;t be a worthwhile test for the justice system in general. Hire actors to pose as criminals in the system where the person is not guilty, but where most evidence supports a guilty verdict with a few smaller pieces of evidence that prove innocent. With this we find out how many prosecutors take the case all the way to conviction by willingly choosing to ignore evidence suggesting guilt and which decide to drop the case because they believe the person to be innocent. This would be the equivalent of acceptance testing the justice system.

34000 tainted cases is not &quot;messed up big time&quot;. It&#x27;s deliberate and malicious. And she gets 3-5 years? Bullshit.

I assume nothing will happen to the prosecutors she worked with.

Previously: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Laboratory#Controversy" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;FBI_Laboratory#Controversy</a>

According to Dookhan&#x27;s lawyer, she says that she did it because she wanted to get a 8 hour pay-check, that there was &quot;too much red tape&quot; but very loose protocol.<p>But - she&#x27;s <i>not</i> a rogue chemist! Oh no.<p>When chemists do lab tests, are they blind to the criminal circumstances themselves?<p><a href="http://www.wbur.org/2013/11/29/dookhan-lawyer" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wbur.org&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;29&#x2F;dookhan-lawyer</a><p>What I find really awful, is that in many cases, jobs were lost, families destroyed, and sentences were stiffer because of false results by this chemist.

Could she have been manipulated by prosecutors? Yes she should be held accountable for her actions, but I have a hunch that prosecutors had something more to do with this.

I&#x27;m curious what percentage of testing goes through that lab.

I am shocked and horrified that a loyal servant of the system should be discarded so casually. After all, falsifying convictions is just a part of how the system works, isn&#x27;t it?<p>You have to keep the lower orders scared to keep them loyal - otherwise they might start getting ideas above their station, mightn&#x27;t they? It&#x27;s like holding a wolf by the ears: release it, and we would all be in trouble.

Story looked familiar. This is back in March.

Being a Mass. Resident this is really really really really old news! How the hell is this just not getting here?

what is her motive?