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USA - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug cases

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#26

06-10-2012, 00:11

source

Sleep Postin'

Join Date: 24-04-2010
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England

Posts: 1,382

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

Yeah it's pretty mad how many
cases this involves.

Quote:

According to court records, Pixley was
convicted of rape in 1978. His record also includes
convictions on seven separate drug distribution charges, assault and
battery, and larceny.

This is
disturbing to know that people like this will be walking the
streets again, god knows how many in total there will be.
Especially when it also states that some felons were charged
with other more serious crimes but lack of evidence resulted
in them only serving time for lesser drug crimes; which now
are not going to stand up.

I can't imagine what kind of
criminals are now going to be set free because of this. I
really hope Dookhan gets what is deserved, and that no-one
suffers at the hands of those released.

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#27

06-10-2012, 10:49

SmokeTwibz

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Posts: 837

Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

Up to 500
defendants face release in Massachusetts drug lab scandal

BOSTON (AP) -- About 300 to 500 defendants, including
some "pretty dangerous people," may be released into Boston
streets because of the alleged mishandling of evidence at a
Massachusetts drug lab, a prosecutor said
Friday.

Chemist Annie Dookhan is charged with
obstruction of justice for allegedly skirting protocols and
faking test results at the now-closed state drug lab. At least
two dozen defendants whose cases Dookhan handled have been
released, including career criminal and convicted rapist
Marcus Pixley.

Pixley was released on bail earlier this
month but failed to show up for court Wednesday. Quincy police
arrested him Friday; a judge doubled his bail to $2,000 and
set his next court date for Oct. 15.

Suffolk District
Attorney Dan Conley said officials in Boston are "concerned
that there may be violence" if other defendants and convicts
are released and have discussed intervening in the lives of
those who are freed in order to prevent repeat
offenses.

"We may be in the position, we undoubtedly
will be in the position, to assent to the release of some
pretty dangerous people into Boston," Conley
said.

Meanwhile, Mayor Thomas Menino said federal
officials should offer support to ensure that those released
are monitored so "they're not back out on the streets doing
the same thing they did in the past."

"Our crime rate
in Boston right now is down, but if we're going to have maybe
1,200 individuals released to the streets of our city, what
will happen in the future?" Menino asked reporters during a
campaign stop for U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren.
"It's an emergency."

On Friday, Boston Municipal Court
held the first special session to handle criminal cases
challenged in light of the lab scandal.

Defendants
Carlos Colon and Michael Wells were released because Dookhan
signed off on or tested their samples.

Wells, 24, was
arrested in 2009, then violated his probation with drug
distribution charges in 2011. Dookhan tested the 2011 sample,
and Wells has since been in jail.

"He's exactly that
kind of person that needs to be heard today," defense attorney
Jennifer Saunders told Judge Mary Ann
Driscoll.

Saunders said Wells was accepted to Le Cordon
Bleu culinary school and has a young daughter and fiancee. He
was released on personal recognizance and must adhere to a
curfew.

Colon, 21, who had a drug distribution
conviction in 2011, was released on $500 bail and a
curfew.

Three other defendants with cases related to
Dookhan were not released while attorneys continue gathering
information or because they are serving time for other
sentences.

Of the 18 cases heard Friday, only five
actually involved Dookhan.

Conley said court officials
"hastily" compiled the list of defendants brought in for
hearings without input from prosecutors or defense
attorneys.

"What is going on here today is taking away
from our real work that we have to do to identify who really
was affected," Conley said during a break.

Most
defendants were in custody at South Bay House of Correction
and brought into court one by one when their names were
called.

"You have these poor folks, they did their
time, they're doing their time, they admitted to what they've
done, and they have to be traipsed in here in handcuffs and
prison garb ... all of these not related to Annie Dookhan,"
Conley said. "I think this court also has to be
embarrassed."

Asked about public safety in light of the
release of inmates, Gov. Patrick Deval said freeing them is
not a "technicality."

"We are talking about people who
shouldn't have been convicted and who need to have justice
done in their cases," he said.

"In terms of people who
have other charges or records, there's a process for that,
there's a system for that and there's public safety officials
who have responsibility for that," he added.

Deval said
it was too early to estimate how much the state would spend to
address the crisis.

By the Associated Press
Posted:
10/06/2012 01:13:13 AM PDT
http://www.thereporter.com/news/ci_21713934/up-500-defendants-face-release-massachusetts-drug-lab

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#28

11-10-2012, 20:19

source

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Accused drug dealer's trial in
jeopardy after Boston chemist refuses to testify

The
chemist at the center of a Massachusetts drug-testing lab scandal refused to testify
Wednesday in a drug case against a Boston man who once spent
15 years in prison for the slaying of a 12-year-old girl he
says he did not commit.

A lawyer for Shawn Drumgold
asked a judge to dismiss two drug charges against her client
because chemist Annie Dookhan's initials appear on a drug
analysis form in the case.

Dookhan is charged with
obstruction of justice for allegedly skirting protocols and
faking test results for thousands of drug tests at the
now-closed William A. Hinton State Laboratory Institute, which
houses the Massachusetts state drug lab.

The judge
refused to throw out the case, however, and Drumgold's drug
trial began Wednesday afternoon. Dookhan appeared in court but
did not take the stand and exercised her Fifth Amendment right
not to testify.

Pleading
the Fifth: Annie Dookhan, pictured, leaves a Boston courthouse
escorted by court officers and her lawyer after refusing to
testify in a drug case against Shawn Drumgold, Wednesday, Oct.
10, 2012

'It would be wrong for anyone to read into
Mrs. Dookhan's decision to assert her Fifth Amendment
privilege as any admission of criminal culpability,' her
lawyer, Nicolas Gordon, later said.

'She made that
decision based on my advice, not only because she has pending
criminal charges but also because of the indication by the
attorney general's office that more charges might be
forthcoming.'

Thomas Costello, the prosecutor in
Drumgold's case, said although Dookhan's name appeared in the
paperwork used in court, she was simply the notary and the
testing of the suspected cocaine and heroin was done by two other
chemists.

The drug case is separate from Drumgold's
overturned conviction in the 1988 killing of 12-year-old
Darlene Tiffany Moore, who was hit by stray bullets from gang
crossfire while sitting on a mailbox in Boston's Roxbury
neighborhood.

Overturned:
The drug case is separate from Drumgold's, left, overturned
conviction in the 1988 killing of 12-year-old Darlene Tiffany
Moore, below, who was hit by stray bullets from gang
crossfire

A judge in 2003 freed Drumgold after a
key witness recanted his testimony. Drumgold always maintained
his innocence.

A federal jury awarded Drumgold $14
million in 2009 in a civil rights lawsuit he filed against
police in the case.

When Drumgold was arrested on drug
possession charges in 2011, he was the only person out of 14
people in a Boston apartment charged, his lawyer, Rosemary
Scapicchio, said Wednesday.

He denied the drugs were his and she thinks Boston police
only arrested him because of his legal victory against the
department.

Scapicchio said Wednesday prosecutors
hadn't provided her with sufficient drug testing evidence in
the case.

Costello
said they have been unable to fulfill her request for some documents because the closed lab is a 'crime
scene' in the custody of the state attorney general's office
as it investigates the testing scandal.

State police,
who took over operation of the lab from the Department of
Public Health, have said Dookhan tested more than 60,000
samples covering 34,000 defendants during her nine years at
the lab.

State officials said last week that they have
identified more than 1,100 defendants who are serving time in
county jails or state prisons based on samples tested by
Dookhan.

Dookhan has pleaded not guilty and is free on
$10,000 bail.

PUBLISHED 11 October 2012
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2215928/Accused-drug-dealers-trial-jeopardy-corrupt-Boston-chemist-refuses-testify.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

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#29

16-10-2012, 23:22

source

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Sentences put on hold over Mass.
drug lab scandal

BOSTON (AP) — One at a time,
the prison inmates sat down at a wooden table, linked by
videoconference to a Boston courtroom, where their attorneys
and prosecutors explained the role a disgraced chemist played
in their criminal cases.

One by one, the judge
agreed to let them go free while their legal challenges make
their way through the courts, placing their sentences on hold
and setting bail.

The fallout from a scandal at a state
drug lab played out in court Monday, as
Judge Christine McEvoy began hearing what is expected to be
nearly 200 legal challenges in Suffolk Superior Court drug
cases.

The chemist, Annie Dookhan, 34, of Franklin, has
been charged with obstruction of justice and accused of
skirting protocols and faking tests results at a former
Department of Public Health lab. The Boston lab was closed by
state police in August after Dookhan told them she had faked
test results, forged paperwork and sometimes mixed samples.
She has pleaded not guilty.

The scandal has put
thousands of criminal cases in jeopardy. Dookhan tested more
than 60,000 samples covering about 34,000 defendants in her
nine years at the lab, according to state
police.

Monday was the first day of a two-week special
session set up to hear challenges in Suffolk Superior Court,
which covers Boston. Similar sessions have been scheduled in
courts around the state. The first sessions were held in
Boston Municipal Court earlier this month.

The assembly
line-style of hearing cases via videoconference made for some
unusually casual moments.

After the judge greeted the
first inmate, he responded, ‘‘How ya doin'?’’

The judge
told another defendant she would set bail at $1,000 and asked
him if he agreed to the terms of his release, including GPS
monitoring and an overnight curfew. The inmate responded,
‘‘Yes, I'm OK with that.’’

During the morning session,
McEvoy granted defense motions to place sentences on hold and
set bail for about 10 inmates now serving time at the state
prison in Norfolk. Prosecutors agreed to those motions after
producing drug analysis certificates showing that Dookhan was
the chemist who performed either an initial test or a second
confirmatory test on the substances.

In several cases,
Assistant District Attorney Paul Treseler requested cash bail
of $10,000 or $15,000, noting that the defendants had long
criminal records and histories of violating their probation or
failing to show up for court. In most cases, McEvoy set lower
bail than the amounts sought by prosecutors but higher than
the amount requested by defense attorneys.

The judge
made it clear that the cases against the inmates were not
over. She ordered all of them to appear in court for a status
conference next month.

Dookhan and her attorney have
repeatedly declined to comment on the charges against her.
Last week, she invoked her Fifth Amendment right against
self-incrimination and refused to testify at a drug
defendant’s trial.

Some defense attorneys said they
believe many of the cases could eventually be dismissed
because allegations that Dookhan mishandled samples have made
the evidence at the heart of their cases
unreliable.

James Greenberg, who represents a
26-year-old convicted of distributing cocaine and now serving a three-year
sentence, told the judge, ‘‘I don’t know how this case ever
gets tried.’’

McEvoy set the man’s bail at $1,000 and
ordered him to be monitored by GPS and to not leave his home
between 10 p.m. and 6 p.m. She ordered him to report back to
court on Nov. 15.

‘‘I think a lot of these cases are in
trouble, and cases will be dismissed,’’ Greenberg said after
the hearing. He said he believes all drug cases in which
Dookhan participated in testing should be thrown out if the
defendants do not face other charges.

‘‘We know she’s
manipulated drugs, so anything she’s touched is
tainted,’’ he said.

Suffolk District Attorney Dan
Conley acknowledged that wading through each of Dookhan’s
cases individually will be ‘‘a tedious and lengthy process,’’
but he said the circumstances of each case must be
considered.

‘‘Most of these individuals have lengthy
criminal records with histories of violence as well,’’ he
said. ‘‘We are concerned about their liberty issues, but we
have to be concerned about public safety.’’

Anthony
Benedetti, chief counsel for the Committee for Public Counsel
Services, which represents indigent defendants, said he
objects to that description, saying many are low-level
nonviolent offenders and others might be
innocent.

‘‘The process of identifying the thousands
affected by this miscarriage of justice is ongoing and the
facts to substantiate such characterizations are not yet
available,’’ he said.

By DENISE LAVOIE
Associated
Press / October 15, 2012
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2012/10/15/sentences-put-hold-over-mass-drug-lab-scandal/Tt14DAL2ANG1bk9qbvsqsI/story.html

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#30

20-10-2012, 16:10

AmbitiousStoner

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

Norfolk prosecutor with ties to Dookhan
resigns

The Norfolk County prosecutor who carried
on an unauthorized phone and e-mail correspondence with
controversial state chemist Annie Dookhan resigned today,
saying he did not want to be “a further distraction” from the
investigation into criminal misconduct in the state drug lab in Jamaica Plain.

George
Papachristos, an assistant district attorney who prosecuted
numerous drug cases in which Dookhan provided the drug
analysis, exchanged dozens of emails with Dookhan, some of
them veering into personal subjects, including Dookhan’s
troubled marriage. At one point, Dookhan’s husband contacted
Papachristos directly, apparently out of concern that the two
were having an affair. However, State Police have concluded
the two did not have an affair and Papachristos insisted that
the relationship was strictly
professional.

Papachristos, 37, turned in his
resignation today to Norfolk District Attorney Michael
Morrissey, who agreed to accept it.

“George
Papachristos communicated that he does not wish to be a
further distraction from the central issue of the criminal
conduct that has been alleged and the complete breakdown of
supervision that allowed it to continue,” Morrissey said in a
statement.

Dookhan’s alleged mishandling of evidence at
the state drug lab has thrown the state’s justice system into
turmoil. She was involved in drug testing for tens of
thousands of cases over her career at the now-closed lab. A
number of drug convicts have already been released from
custody because of questions about the handling of evidence in
their cases.

The revelation of Dookhan’s relationship
with Papachristos may give defense attorneys even more
ammunition to throw out drug convictions involving her work,
the Globe reported this morning.

Post Quality
Evaluations:

Excellent update to this
thread and ongoing case,
thanks

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#31

24-10-2012, 11:24

SmokeTwibz

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

District Attorney
Michael Morrissey says lab scandal will
reverberate

MEDFIELD
— The Hinton State Crime Lab scandal, which called into
question the accuracy of 68,000 drug samples used in court as evidence, will
be keeping local court officials busy for years, according to
Norfolk County District Attorney Michael
Morrissey.

Morrissey was in the process of poring
through thousands of cases when he spoke to the Press on
Friday, Oct. 12.

He estimated 5,000 cases in Norfolk
County will be affected. Some will be dismissed entirely,
while others may be partially sustained, he
said.

“We’re doing a painstaking, slow, careful review
on a case-by-case basis,” Morrissey said. “We’re not just
throwing in the towel. We’re going through them one at a time
with a couple sets of eyes, to see if there is anything that
can be salvaged.”

The priority now is to deal with the
approximately 75-to-100 people who were jailed based in part
on the faulty evidence, and see if they will be exonerated,
Morrissey said.

The whole process involves going
through storage facilities full of documents, he said. His department has hired
temporary staff to help with the process and every person on
his staff is helping out in some way, he said.

“I’ve
had people working in cellars of buildings and backrooms and
closets,” he said. “It’s a dusty, dirty job.”

Morrissey
and his staff became aware there might be a problem in
February, when the office received a letter from Linda Han,
director of the Bureau of Laboratory Sciences.

Han
wrote there was a breach of protocol involving 90 drug
samples, which could affect 60 Norfolk County
cases.

“That was the tip of the iceberg,” Morrissey
said.

Following a Massachusetts State Police audit, it
was found that all cases by chemist Annie Dookhan from 2003 to
2011 were suspect, Morrissey said.

Morrissey was
notified in August that all 68,000 samples would have to be
reviewed. Those samples will affect cases in Suffolk, Norfolk,
Plymouth and Bristol counties, as well as the Cape and
Islands, he said.

Just pulling the cases involved may
take as long as a month, Morrissey said. The whole process of
reviewing the cases will take multiple years, he
said.

The one silver lining is that the state has
gotten a more secure crime lab system that will be overseen by
the state police, something Morrissey has long advocated, he
said.

Morrissey said if anyone has a question about a
particular case, they should call his office at 781-830-4800
and ask for Suzanne O’Neil.

Contact reporter Dave
Eisenstadter at 781-433-8336

By Dave Eisenstadter |
Wicked Local Medfield
Posted Oct 23, 2012 @ 03:29 PM
http://www.patriotledger.com/topstories/x493675485/District-Attorney-Michael-Morrissey-says-lab-scandal-will-reverberate

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#32

24-10-2012, 13:06

hookedonhelping

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

I wonder how much money this is
going to ultimately cost.

If I were exonerated, my
next step would be to sue to the state for every penny I could
get for the stress, anxiety and depression that I would have
endured which ultimately would equate to precious time off my
life expectancy. Not to mention the emotional damage my
absence would have caused my family and loved ones.

I
hope they do just that. This story, now months old,
still gets the blood boiling! Draconian drug laws break families, but in this case,
they might break the bank too! I hate to be the guy that
cheers for the bad guys but it's justified here.

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#33

24-10-2012, 23:48

AmbitiousStoner

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

Quote:

Originally Posted by
hookedonhelping

I wonder how much money
this is going to ultimately cost.

If I were
exonerated, my next step would be to sue to the state
for every penny I could
get...

The following
article provides some chilling estimates for the projected
costs:

Former colleague testifies Annie
Dookhan had access to state lab, drug database

Annie
Dookhan, the chemist at the center of the state drug lab
controversy, had the codes to access the lab’s computer system
and could open the lab in the morning, one of Dookhan’s former
colleagues testified today.

Daniella Frasca, whose
workstation was right next to Dookhan’s for eight years, was
testifying in the Roxbury Municipal Court trial of Shawn
Drumgold. Drumgold’s attorney is trying to discredit the drug
evidence against her client by probing into the lab’s workings
and suggesting Dookhan’s actions there tainted the
evidence.

Dookhan’s alleged mishandling of evidence at
the lab has already thrown the state’s criminal justice system
into turmoil. Officials say thousands of drug cases have been
jeopardized by her actions.

Frasca was one of two
former colleagues of Dookhan from the now-closed state lab to
testify today.

Neither provided direct evidence that
Dookhan had mishandled evidence. But under cross-examination,
defense attorney Rosemary Curran Scapicchio raised questions
about overall security at the lab.

It was the first
time any of Dookhan’s former co-workers have testified — and
the first time they have publicly described the inner workings
of the lab. As many as five of Dookhan’s former co-workers are
expected to testify. Dookhan herself has taken the Fifth
Amendment and declined to testify in the case.

Drumgold
is no stranger to high-profile cases. He was convicted of
first-degree murder in the 1988 slaying of 12-year-old Darlene
Tiffany Moore, who was shot while sitting on a mailbox on a
Roxbury street. He has denied any involvement in the murder.
Drumgold served 15 years behind bars, but had his conviction
overturned when The Boston Globe and Scapicchio raised
questions about the investigation and the failure of police to
turn over potentially exculpatory evidence about a key
eyewitness in the case.

Drumgold won a
multimillion-dollar wrongful conviction lawsuit. But
Scapicchio said he has not yet been paid the $14 million
judgment because the city of Boston has appealed the
verdict to the First US Circuit Court of Appeals.

Now
he is being tried again before Judge David Weingarten on
charges of possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute and
possession of heroin, second offense. He has pleaded not
guilty to all charges.

State Police have said Dookhan
handled 60,000 samples involving 34,000 criminal cases during
her nine-year career at the closed Department of Public Health
lab. Dookhan has pleaded not guilty to two counts of
obstruction of justice and one count of falsifying her
academic records. She is free on $10,000 cash
bail.

Also today, the American Civil Liberties Union
and Families Against Mandatory Minimums called on prosecutors
and the defense bar to dramatically change the way they are
responding to the drug lab scandal, which the ACLU
projected may cost up to $100 million to
address.

In a seven-page letter sent to
Attorney General Martha Coakley and all district attorneys,
the groups called for the wholesale dismissal of thousands of
minor drug cases, and the dismissal of major drug prosecutions
where the defendant has served at least half of the prison
sentence.

The Globe reported last week that the
Massachusetts District Attorneys Association was going to ask
the Patrick administration for at least $10 million a year,
possibly for the next five years, to deal with the
increased workload caused by the scandal. In its statement,
the ACLU said the defense bar, through the Committee on
Public Counsel Services, will seek a similar amount, forcing
taxpayers to pay $100 million.

“Abundant
evidence shows that prosecuting drug cases takes a terrible
human and financial toll even in cases that do not involve
tainted evidence,” Matthew Segal, legal director of the ACLU
in Massachusetts, said in a statement. “Accordingly, it makes
no sense to re-prosecute tens of thousands of cases that do
involve tainted evidence...it is not time for an expensive,
misguided and ill-fated do-over.”

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#34

24-10-2012, 23:59

AmbitiousStoner

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

State drug lab 101: Students predicted cuts were
disaster

It didn’t take a Beacon Hill think tank
or a multi-million-dollar study to figure out that steady
budget cuts to the William A. Hinton State Laboratory
Institute — home of the state’s drug lab now at the center of
an outrageous evidence mishandling crisis — could lead to
devastating problems.

Three Brandeis University
students predicted something like this would happen two years
ago for one of their class projects.

Their final paper
for a course called “Advocacy for Public Change” — available
on Brandeis’ website — tracked deep cuts to the Hinton lab in
Jamaica Plain over the years and warned the state was setting
itself up for disaster.

"Without proper funding,” reads
the students’ report, “HSLI’s integral programs will suffer,
and in turn will put at risk the health and safety of
Massachusetts residents.”

The students did not predict
a rogue chemist would mishandle thousands of evidence samples,
leading to the release of convicted felons and plunging the
state’s courts into chaos. But it did warn that the lax
funding could lead to the spread of diseases such as
tuberculosis, and pose even greater safety risks for lab
workers.

“Insufficient funding will have a crippling
effect on HSLI’s capacity to support many of its critical
programs and services,” they wrote. “These programs are vital
to maintaining a high quality of health care in
Massachusetts.”

As part of the course, the students had
to write a newspaper Op-Ed, come up with an elevator pitch and
meet with State House staffers.

Source: Boston
Herald, October 21, 2012

Post Quality
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Excellent and interesting
update, thanks

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#35

26-10-2012, 23:26

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Costs climb in state drug lab
scandal

In
its first detailed tally of the impact of the drug lab controversy, the state’s judiciary
said it needs $8.72 million to deal with legal challenges to
as many as 136,000 criminal cases in which evidence was
allegedly mishandled by a state drug lab
chemist.

In a letter sent to the Patrick
administration Wednesday, Judge Robert Mulligan, the top judge
for administration, and Court Administrator Harry Spence said
the funds would pay for 18 months of litigation related to
chemist Annie Dookhan’s actions over nine years working for
the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

The
request pushes to more than $35 million the total cost sought
so far for the state to deal with the fallout of the Dookhan
scandal.

“The influx of drug lab cases will be
extremely detrimental to meeting our clearance rate goals and
disposing of cases within their time frame metrics,” Mulligan
said in a statement released to the Globe Thursday.

The
judiciary has already set up drug lab sessions in courthouses
across the state. In its letter, the judiciary said it will
need to hire retired judges to assist with the caseload, which
could total 5,000 in superior court alone during the next 18
months.

In its letter, the judiciary also said it would
use the money to hire 27 people in superior court, including
three retired judges who would hear cases for $220 a day, and
to hire 48 assistant clerk magistrates, case specialists, and
law clerks for the district and Boston Municipal
Court.

The plan also calls for hiring 18 probation
officers and 14 associate probation officers.

Mayor
Thomas M. Menino has already asked for $15 million to deal
with the aftermath of the scandal, including the release of
drug dealers back into the Boston community.

Requests
from the state’s district attorneys are expected to exceed $10
million, and a request for millions more is expected to come
from the Committee on Public Counsel Services, which is
providing defense attorneys for thousands of defendants
affected by the drug lab scandal.

Attorney General
Martha Coakley is also seeking up to $2 million for a sweeping
inquiry into the lab’s operations.

Terrel Harris, a
spokesman for the Executive Office of Public Safety, said the
administration would not publicly reveal funding requests made
by its constituent agencies, which include the State Police,
the Department of Correction, and the Parole Board.

He
said the dollar amount sought by public safety agencies would
be made public by the state’s Executive Office of
Administration and Finance.

Dookhan is accused of
mishandling and manipulating drug evidence that may have
helped convict hundreds of people or led them to plead guilty,
during a Department of Public Health career that began in 2003
and ended earlier this year, after she resigned.

The
Patrick administration and Coakley initially contended that
Dookhan’s impact was limited to about 100 Norfolk County
cases.

But State Police assigned to Coakley’s office
discovered a far greater problem this summer and have alerted
prosecutors that at least 34,000 criminal cases, involving
60,000 drug samples, may have been tainted.

The court’s
estimate of 136,000 cases is based on the total number of drug
cases the courts handled in which evidence was sent to the
closed Jamaica Plain lab.

Dookhan has pleaded not
guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and one count
of falsifying her academic record. Dookhan, 34, the mother of
a young son, is free on $10,000 cash bail.

Former
homicide prosecutor David Meier has identified some 1,600
people serving sentences in state or county prison where
Dookhan may have handled the seized contraband. He also said
another 319 juveniles who were prosecuted for drug crimes had
the evidence in their cases processed in the Jamaica Plain
lab.

All of the juveniles have finished their DYS
commitments and are no longer in custody.

In September,
the Patrick administration set Oct. 24 as the deadline for
government agencies to file a supplemental budget request
related to the drug lab scandal. In a statement Wednesday,
Secretary of Administration and Finance Jay Gonzalez said some
state agencies and municipal governments have met the
deadline.

But Gonzalez, through a spokeswoman, refused
to release individual requests that have been received by the
deadline.

Alex Zaroulis said Thursday that the
administration will not release what the agencies have asked
for until the data has been reviewed. She said the
administration’s supplemental budget request, to be filed next
week, will be publicly available.

In the statement
released Wednesday, Gonzalez said he will file a “supplemental
appropriations bill for the sole purpose of seeking interim
funding sufficient to cover costs related to the crime lab for
at least the next few months.’’

Gonzalez would decide
who gets the money once he gets “documented costs associated
with the crime lab."

He also said the agency will work
with affected agencies to “ensure that any future funding
needs are addressed in an effective and responsible
manner."

By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff, October 26,
2012.
http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/10/25/top-judge-says-courts-need-deal-with-cases-potentially-tied-annie-dookhan/HiFFQAUZwfeEbAIA21dmzM/story.html

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#36

10-11-2012, 01:39

source

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Martha Coakley calls for
independent probe of state drug lab policies and
procedures

Attorney
General Martha Coakley is asking the governor to appoint an
independent investigator to review the policies, practices,
and oversight at the state laboratory in Jamaica Plain where a
chemist’s alleged mishandling of evidence has thrown thousands
of drug cases into question.

The
attorney general’s office wants to focus on a criminal
investigation of Annie Dookhan, the diminutive chemist from
Franklin at the center of the drug lab scandal, and let the
independent investigator conduct a broader look.

“It is
critical that all parties have unquestioned faith in that
process from the beginning so that they will have full
confidence in the conclusions drawn at the end,” Coakley said
in a statement. “As a result, we are now requesting that the
Governor – in consultation with District Attorneys and defense
counsel – appoint an independent investigator to conduct this
broader review.”

The governor’s office immediately said
it would appoint someone. “We will waste no time identifying a
new person to take up this important responsibility,”
governor’s spokeswoman Kim Haberline said in a
statement.

Coakley’s office had been conducting a
two-track inquiry, both investigating Dookhan and beginning an
inquiry to determine if cases handled by chemists other than
Dookhan were tainted.

A coalition of lawyers’ groups,
including the state bar association and the state’s public
defender agency, called last week for an independent
investigation of the lab, though they did not call for Coakley
to back off her probe of Dookhan.

“The Massachusetts
Bar Association applauds the attorney general’s decision in
calling for a broader investigation into the drug lab, and
looks forward to working with the governor on this pressing
issue,” Martin W. Healy, chief legal counsel for the bar
association, said in a statement.

Carol Rose, executive
director of the American Civil Liberties Union of
Massachusetts, also praised Coakley’s move, saying, “As
unimpeachable as the Office of the Attorney General is, to
truly expedite an incontrovertible resolution to this crisis
and fully restore public confidence in our criminal justice
system, this expanded investigation must be — and must be seen
— to be credible and beyond reproach.”

Authorities fear
that Dookhan, whose motives are not clear, may have tainted
evidence in 34,000 criminal cases over the nine years she
worked at the Jamaica Plain lab run by the Department of
Public Health. The lab has now been shut down. Special court
sessions are being held to deal with more than 1,000 people
who are now imprisoned or awaiting trial on drug charges that
may have involved evidence handled by Dookhan.

Dookhan,
who faces two counts of obstruction of justice and one count
of fabricating her academic history, has pleaded not guilty to
all charges and is free on $10,000 cash bail.

Also
today, a group of lawmakers in the state House announced they
would hold hearings into practices at the Department of Public
Health, saying hearings would look both at the state drug and
at oversight of pharmacies, which has become an issue since a
Framingham compounding pharmacy was linked to a nationwide
meningitis outbreak.

By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff -
31st October 2012.
http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2012/10/31/martha-coakley-calls-for-independent-probe-state-drug-lab-policies-and-procedures/GuIdMmUxDdPUXz0QI0ycNM/story.html

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#37

11-11-2012, 06:35

runnerupbeautyqueen

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

Is it quicker to identify a
substance as a drug than it is to identify a substance as
not being a drug? I'm just wondering why she wanted all the
samples to be positive and not negative. It seems like if you
were just eyeballing the stuff you'd at least guess that some
of the samples were negative, right? Wouldn't it have looked
suspicious if all of your 500 monthly samples are always
testing positive? Not only that, but that all of your
positives were positive for cocaine?

Hell I'll test any drug they
want to give me. And you can bet I won't be doing it just by
looking at it. I can totally see her in the back of the lab
with a mirror, a straw, and a clipboard going "oh yes, this is
definitely positive for cocaine, actually on second thought I
should retest this sample. Maybe just a third test, just to be
sure."

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#38

18-11-2012, 02:21

AmbitiousStoner

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

The Catalyst For Change: The
Annie Dookhan Episode
Source: The Truth About
Forensic Science

Do you know why
convenience stores have security cameras?

to deter crime against the store;

to catch those who have taken money from the register;

to catch shoplifters;

to catch employees who steal from the company;

to see when employees leave early or come in late;

to record when crime happens; and

to aid in the prosecution of those who
cheat the store or rob the store.

It seems like such
a basic safeguard that there would be no
legitimate argument against having it. Who
would want to work in a convenience store
without it? By having it there, legitimate
customers feel safer and are in truth safer.

How about banks? They have security
cameras for the same reasons.

Motion activated cameras are
inexpensive.

Memory is dirt cheap.

Who can legitimately argue against
these omnipresent fixtures in our lives?

In a FaceBook world, our
expectation of privacy is less and less and
less.

As a society, why do we have
better safeguards against fraud and against crime at
a 7-Eleven than we do in a crime laboratory?

The simple salient take away fact from
the Annie Dookhan situation that we can all
appreciate is that the traditional
safeguards such as human integrity, and the
Confrontation Clause will not stop the Annie
Dookhans of this world. She was willing to put her hand
on the Bible, swear an oath and repeatedly lie in Court
about her credentials. She was willing to forge
documents of her coworkers.
She was willing to purposefully
contaminate samples to change
the results to suit her own meaningless selfish
agenda. When someone is willing to do all of this
and goodness knows what else, the traditional
safeguards are worthless.

Confrontation cannot stop all
of that. Human integrity is not a sufficient check
against these transgressions.

It’s time that we just put an end to it all.
It’s time we call for the ultimate forensic
safeguard. Let’s video tape the labs.

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#39

18-11-2012, 02:37

AmbitiousStoner

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

The Fukushima Of Forensics:
Annie Dookhan

Article written by attorney Justin McShane

who is listed as the highest rated DUI attorney in
Pennsylvania.

The poster child for everything
that is wrong in forensic science: Annie Dookhan

It is
amazing the state of forensic science in the
courtroom. Judges still routinely deny
discovery motions for scientific data,
validation studies and even basic
scientific data. They justify this stating
that a conculsory report that states an opinion
is good enough. Blind trust. Further, it is
troubling to me that there still appears to be a debate
about the need for actual confrontation in court of
the folks who actually do the analysis.

Defense
attorneys do not get data. We get simple
conclusory statements that state a
scientific opinion, but is couched and phrased
as an absolute with no meaningful
scientific explanation as to how the
conclusory opinion was formed.

All of
this leads towards a grand statement:
Just because the result
came from a laboratory does not mean it comes
from the Almighty.

I frequently
tell judges and prosecutors: Trust but
verify.

It’s ok to trust the crime
laboratory, but it is incumbent upon us to
verify.

Why not stipulate to a forensic science
result?

I have been interviewed by CNN, ABS,
Nature, CE&N and The Boston Globeabout this
developing epic scandal. The picture is
becoming clearer.

And it is just
horrible! Shades of a Fukushima like
disaster in forensics.

I have been
repeatedly commenting on the complete lack
of oversight in that laboratory. In all
pharmaceutical
laboratories as well as all highly
regulated laboratories have a
Quality Assurance (QA) Officer. Not so in this
laboratory. Also, few crime
laboratories have a well-qualified and
totally independent QA Officer.

After
fully reading the State Police report obtained
by the Boston Globe, the following has been
discovered:

General matters of
concern surrounding the crime laboratory:

This crime laboratory was set up as a two
chemist system but with no QA officer. There was a
primary chemist who did the initial screen tests
(colormetric) and
crystallography and a secondary
chemist who did the GC-MS work. However, there was no
double-checking of the work by those two chemists or among
each other. There was no QA officer actually
looking at the data generated or if there was
any data generated at all. There was no
double-checker.

Despite documented direct
complaints from coworkers, supervisors
did nothing, This included:

Multiple accounts that fellow bench
workers in the laboratory never saw
Dookhan use the microscope at all while she
continued to report results as a primary
chemist performing
crystallography testing (which
requires microscopy)

Co-workers complained that Dookhan was forging
their signatures.

Others complained about her lack of
documentation.

Others complained about her
questionable laboratory results.

Frequently, Dookhan was allowed to be both the
primary chemist and the secondary chemist on the
same sample. This was clearly against written
laboratory procedures and policy.

Dookhan was allowed to train others in QC
procedures although she was not
qualified to do so.

When chemists were audited, there is confusion
as to whether or not it was a full retest of samples or
simply a paper audit.

There was no record of how samples could be
resubmitted, and the number of these retests
were not tracked. In other words, they just simply
retested until they got the result they wanted with all
“non-conforming” results not disclosed and records
destroyed. Only the “agreeable” results were saved.

The evidence room and evidence safe were
readily accessible to chemists even when they
were alone.

The evidence room procedures to restrict
access were ignored and circumvented. The safe could be
opened by either a palm reader or a key. The key was left in
the keyhole as a normal practice. The safe was
found open on numerous occasions. The safe was
left unattended. It routinely was left propped
open when it was “busy.” It was accessible by
codes and keys that had not been changed in over a decade.
Chemists had keys to the lab which also were capable of
opening the evidence safe. Further, the palm
reader access point to the evidence room might not have
been recording those who entered.

Matters specific to Dookhan:

As a primary chemist, Dookhan dry labbed. Instead
of doing any sort of scientific process she would
simply look at the samples instead of testing
them and form a conclusion and report it out.

When she dry labbed many samples came back as heroin when she had supposedly
tested it and found it to be cocaine and vice versa. She would then
alter these original seized samples so that
they would come out the way she wanted. She would
purposefully contaminate
them.

Dookhan was a throughput master. She often
analyzing more samples in a week than they
did in a month. [This level of “production” should
have concerned everyone.]

Dookhan forged Quality Control documents.

Dookhan would routinely forge the
signature of other analysts, chemists, and
shockingly evidence officer initials.
She never kept track in what cases she did this.

Dookhan failed to follow basic
laboratory procedures. This
included failing to calibrate balances.
She routinely failed to fill out basic chain of
custody documents.

When working as the preliminary
chemist, he ignored laboratory
procedures by loading and running her
own samples on the GC-MS rather than turning them
over to the secondary chemist. [Justin’s note: This is
how she very easily dry labbed]

Dookhan repeatedly failed to properly run QC
test samples.

Dookhan literally made up QC results
recording them in the “Quality Control Daily
Injector Test on the GC/MS.”

When she was the primary chemist, she would
handle the aliquots of the samples in a poor
manner that would foster cross
contamination. She would keep
racks upon racks of sample vials out in the open on her
bench top.

She was suspended.

Even while she was suspended and
prohibited from doing any active work, she did.

Even while she was suspended and
prohibited from doing any active work, she had
access to the evidence office computers.

Dookhan was alone in the evidence locker on
occasion which was against laboratory
rules.

Dookhan became the “go to” chemist of choice by
district attorneys. She would routinely
receive direct calls from them. She would
prioritize those requested items and received
extraneous information about the case so
as to skew her opinion.

She lied about having a Masters Degree.

She lied about a lot of her training.

Post Quality
Evaluations:

Excellent addition to
ongoing thread, thanks

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#40

28-11-2012, 20:04

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

Drug lab special counsel
moves on to file-by-file review

Gov.
Deval Patrick on Tuesday authorized a file-by-file review of
cases processed by the Hinton state drug laboratory over the past nine years to
make sure no individuals have been overlooked by the state’s
probe of those impacted by an indicted chemist’s alleged
mishandling of evidence.

“That may take some time,”
said David Meier, the attorney appointed by Patrick to lead a
new office tasked with linking the 60,000 samples touched by
former chemist Annie Dookhan over her career with specific
cases.

Meier, meeting with reporters in a makeshift
“central office” where he has been working for the past two
months, said he and his team met with Patrick Tuesday morning
to discuss winding down the first phase of his work and moving
to a case-by-case analysis of the lab files.

Meier is
scheduled to join senior State Police, Patrick administration
officials and district attorneys Wednesday to testify before
three legislative committees conducting oversight hearings. He
plans to file a letter with the governor later Tuesday
summarizing his work to date.

Meier said his team has
identified close to 10,000 individuals so far whose cases may
have been impacted by the alleged conduct of Dookhan, who has
admitted, according to police reports, to altering some drug
samples while testing at the lab.

About 2,000
individuals have been identified since Meier started his work
in September who were either incarcerated in a state prison,
county jail or house of correction on drug charges, or being
held on bail awaiting trial in state or federal court. Those
presently in custody were deemed the top priority by the
administration.

More than 7,000 more people whose cases
were handled by Dookhan are on parole, probation or were
previously convicted in Superior Court or found delinquent in
Juvenile Court, according to Meier. Previous convictions of
individuals who have already served their sentences accounted
for roughly 3,000 of those cases.

Meier said a
remaining focus of his work is to identify those not currently
involved with the justice system, and should include those
previously convicted in district or Boston Municipal Court. At
the outset of the review, public health officials identified a
preliminary list of about 34,000 cases worked on by Dookhan
during her career.

The central office has also been
able to identify some individuals convicted on multiple
charges, including at least one drug offense, and is still
working with the court system to gather additional information
on these people.

The file-by-file review will attempt
to find any individuals who might have been missed in that
initial scrape of the lab’s documents that showed Dookhan to have worked
on roughly 34,000 cases between 2003 and 2012, all of which
could be compromised by her conduct.

“The system is
working and to the extent that there have been alleged wrongs
committed, prosecutors and defense attorneys have been working
to bring those before a judge,” Meier said.

About 400
cases have already been brought before judges in Suffolk
County alone, said Meier. He did not have an estimate of how
many of those individuals were released following their court
proceedings.

Meier is slated to testify Wednesday at an
oversight hearing before the House committees on public
health, public safety and post audit and oversight. Meier said
anticipating the cost to the state of processing all these
cases handled by Dookhan between 2003 and 2012 was beyond his
purview.

Patrick has filed a request with the
Legislature for $30 million to cover some of the initial
costs, but those are expected to grow and the governor’s
finance advisors say the funding request may only cover the
next few months.

The governor filed the bill on Nov. 1,
but the House and Senate have yet to act and leaders say they
are discussing whether it will be possible to accomplish
during informal sessions scheduled to run until
January.

Meier said he hopes to complete the second
phases of his work within the next three to four months, but
said the timeframe would depend, in part, on what
investigators find.

“We’re going to have to go through
most if not all of the files at the lab,” Meier said.
The
attorney general is conducting a separate criminal
investigation, and the inspector general is conducting a
review of the lab’s operations.

By Matt Murphy
State
House News Service
Posted Nov 27, 2012 @ 01:59 PM

http://www.wickedlocal.com/brookline/news/x1107414626/Drug-lab-special-counsel-moves-on-to-file-by-file-review#axzz2DXrOwLEz

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#41

01-12-2012, 01:41

AmbitiousStoner

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

I doubt anyone is surprised that additional
charges will be filed against Annie Dookhan, but it will be
interesting to see what/how many charges are filed against
her.

Indictments expected vs. disgraced
Mass. chemist

In a court document, Massachusetts
prosecutors say indictments are expected against a former
state chemist accused of tampering with evidence in drug cases.

Annie Dookhan was charged
in September with obstruction of justice and falsifying her
academic credentials. An assistant attorney general said at
the time that the charges were "preliminary" and that a "much
broader" investigation was being conducted.

On Tuesday,
a Boston Municipal Court judge granted a motion filed by state
Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office asking that a
pretrial hearing scheduled for Dec. 3 be rescheduled to Dec.
20. In the motion, prosecutors said the continuance was being
sought because "a grand jury investigation is on-going with
indictments expected" after Dec. 3.

Dookhan hasn’t
responded to repeated requests for comment

Source:
Boston Herald

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#42

01-12-2012, 02:10

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

Quote:

Originally Posted by
AmbitiousStoner

Dookhan hasn’t
responded to repeated requests for
comment

Great update.
^^ that's the annoying part of all this, her silence since the
very beginning. Either she is keeping quiet trying to come up
with viable reason for all the mess or she just knows she's
guilty and done for hence no reason to repeat whats already in
the media.

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#43

01-12-2012, 02:56

AmbitiousStoner

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

I'm not surprised she's stayed
quiet given the amount of jail time she's facing. One article
stated she could get up to 20 years for the obstruction charge
alone. So from a defendant's point of view, it's probably in
her best interest to stay quiet until all the charges are
filed. Then her attorney's will spin the story based upon
whatever defense she uses.

The fact she admitted to
the police that she was at fault, though, makes me wonder if
this will ever see the inside of a court room. Given the
amount of time she's liable to get, it's certainly in her best
interest to enter into a plea agreement, if one is
offered.

The part that irks me is the fact that her
supervisors "didn't know". They had to know. One article cited
that the average case load per chemist was 100 to 150 cases
per month - she was doing as many as 800, but averaged closer
to 300 to 400/month. Makes me wonder why charges haven't been
filed against her supervisors as well.

At this point,
she probably wishes she had gotten arrest for a drug related charge, just so she could point
to her own incompetence as a means of avoiding jail time.

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#44

01-12-2012, 04:13

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

Yeah how ironic would that be!
And I agree with you on the supervisors, we were all saying
back in september how she might have been set up as a
scapegoat and that the issues in the drug lab ran a lot deeper than just to one
individual chemist. It is very unbelievable that nothing was
spotted sooner - maybe nobody in the lab knew how to do their
job properly!!

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#45

01-12-2012, 05:08

AmbitiousStoner

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

Drug Lab Scandal: What
Did Prosecutors Know?
Source: Cognoscenti
website

As someone who has studied past forensic
scandals, I thought I was sufficiently jaded when it came to
lurid stories about what goes on behind-the-scenes in our
country’s crime labs. Then I learned about the alleged
misdeeds of Annie Dookhan.

The disgraced former chemist
from a Massachusetts state crime lab in Jamaica Plain
purportedly forged signatures, tampered with drug samples, bypassed protocols,
disregarded the very concept of chain of custody and
ultimately compromised the legitimacy of evidence in a
staggering number of cases.

News of Dookhan’s conduct
has prompted officials and other stakeholders to ask the
critical questions: How could her supervisors let this go on?
What should happen with the more than 30,000 affected cases?
What changes could prevent this behavior from
re-occurring?

I would like to focus on another
question: To what extent were prosecutors aware of Dookhan’s
actions? More to the point, to what extent should they
have been aware?

In October, the media reported details
about a series of personal, even flirtatious email exchanges
between Dookhan and an assistant district attorney in Norfolk
County who prosecuted multiple drug cases where Dookhan
supplied the analysis.

While this type of coziness may
be an extreme example of the close relationship between
prosecutors and forensic scientists, it points to a broader
issue – the lack of distance, both personal and structural,
that often exists between prosecutors and the “neutral”
experts trusted with the task of examining physical evidence
and testifying in court. The relationship is inherently
co-dependent.

Prosecutors rely on scientists to test
evidence; scientists rely on prosecutors to try criminal cases
in which scientific evidence plays a role, otherwise they may
be out of a job. This co-dependence provides subtle or maybe
not-so-subtle incentives for forensic scientists to please
prosecutors. Similarly, prosecutors have incentives to stroke
the egos of scientists not only to speed up the testing
process, but also to prepare them for effective in-court
testimony.

Lessons from past crime lab scandals suggest
that prosecutors sometimes become so enamored with a forensic
scientist that they ignore even obvious signs of misconduct.
Take Joyce Gilchrist, a chemist in the Oklahoma City Police
Department’s crime lab who remained a darling of local
prosecutors long after courts and fellow forensic scientists
disparaged her work. Among other things, Gilchrist neglected
to distinguish between her personal and scientific opinions,
and dragged her feet in turning over evidence to the
defense.

Or consider Fred Zain, a serologist in West
Virginia in charge of testing bodily fluids for the presence
of antigens and antibodies. Zain far too often testified about
the certainty of findings that were, in reality, far from
certain, and it appears as though he falsified evidence in
more than 100 cases over a ten year period. Yet West Virginia
continued to rely on him even after he left the jurisdiction,
sending samples to Zain in Texas because his successors were
not producing the “right” results.

Were Massachusetts
prosecutors similarly besotted with Dookhan despite possible
warning signs? It is unclear at this point, but perhaps we
will know over time.

What we do know is that the
structure of the relationship between many prosecutors and
forensic scientists is worrisome. Along with providing
additional training and oversight of our forensic scientists,
we should take steps to preserve their independence, to
separate them as much as possible from law enforcement — both
police and prosecutors.

Doing so may require
outsourcing forensic testing to private labs and/or taking
steps to make the testing “blind,” i.e., ensuring that the
scientist does not know which prosecutor is involved in the
case or even which county the case comes from until the matter
approaches trial.

Creating a genuine separation of
functions between prosecutor and chemist can ward off the
problems associated with the coziness factor and pressures to
support one another.

Behavioral psychologists have
studied the power of “conformity effects” within groups, a
phenomenon in which people are reluctant to second-guess their
colleagues in an organization. Prosecutors and forensic
scientists are not and should not be “colleagues.” They serve
very different functions.

But without fundamental
changes to their relationship, the same old scandals are
likely to surface in our nation’s crime
labs.

____________________________________

In
a different article (posted on The Boston Globe website), the
issues with the supervisors have been addressed (though IMO,
they got off easy):

By the time police talked to
Dookhan in late August, problems at the drug lab in Jamaica
Plain had been festering for more than a year. Dookhan had
been barred from doing lab analysis in June 2011 after she was
caught removing 90 drug samples from the evidence room without
authorization. But, even after a confrontation with three lab
supervisors, including Charles Salemi, over the mishandled
evidence, Dookhan stayed on the payroll and appeared as an
expert witness in drug trials.

“In hindsight, Salemi
stated he realizes that was the wrong decision,” Irwin stated
in his report. “They should have notified Quincy [police] and
the Norfolk DA’s office right away. Salemi feels that Annie
Dookhan had a mental breakdown.”

Salemi is facing
disciplinary action while one of the other two supervisors at
a June 21, 2011 meeting where they confronted Dookhan — and
decided to let her stay — was fired.

Source: The
Boston Globe, Excerpts from September 26th article entitled
"Chemist admitted to wrongdoing in lab scandal"

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01-12-2012, 07:12

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Hinton drug lab scandal: lack of
accreditation may have contributed to problem

Burlington — Facing questions
from lawmakers, a top Patrick administration official said
there were no clear answers yet to the fundamental question of
how a former state lab chemist was able to get away for so
long with evidence tampering that has jeopardized as many as
34,000 criminal drug cases.

“We have asked the
question: ‘What happened?’ and ‘How could one chemist have
caused so much damage?’ Annie Dookhan violated the public
trust in choosing to do what she did. She bears responsibility
and is facing criminal charges for these acts,” said Health
and Human Services Secretary JudyAnn Bigby, testifying before
three House committees at an oversight hearing into Hinton
drug lab fiasco.

Dookhan is the former state drug lab
chemist who has admitted to State Police to tampering with
drug samples for a period of two to three years. Attorney
General Martha Coakley has already charged Dookhan with
falsifying her resume and obstruction of justice, and on
Wednesday asked the court to postpone a pre-trial date set for
Dec. 3 in anticipation of further grand jury indictments by
Dec. 20, according to court documents.

The criminal investigation
being conducted by Coakley and the lab review being done by
Inspector General Glen Cuhna could shed more light on how
Dookhan's actions went undetected for so long and whether the
state will be exposed to civil litigation, officials said.
Public Safety Secretary Mary Beth Heffernan said there was no
evidence yet to suggest the work of other chemists has been
compromised.

The House committees on public health,
public safety and post audit and oversight convened the
hearing to look into the drug lab affair as the second of
three oversight hearings exploring problems within the
Department of Public Health. The first hearing focused on the
nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak and compounding pharmacy
oversight. At the final hearing on Dec. 12 representatives
will hear testimony from sheriffs, court leaders and other law
enforcement officials.

Lawmakers peppered Bigby with
questions Wednesday about lab procedures and oversight
protocols in place that might have stopped Dookhan sooner. And
while Bigby said she could not speculate about Dookhan’s
motivations, she acknowledged the pressure placed on chemists
at the Jamaica Plain lab by a backlog of cases, and Public
Safety Secretary Mary Beth Heffernan said $3.4 million was
needed to hire additional chemists to lighten the
load.

Bigby said she agreed that red flags raised by
Dookhan’s high level of productivity that exceeded that of her
former lab colleagues were “not properly investigated,” and
told lawmakers her review of the lab uncovered “serious lapses
in oversight,” including outdated operational procedures and a
failure of supervisors to properly monitor their
subordinates.

She also said the lab’s lack of formal
accreditation was “perhaps one of the contributing factors,”
and surmised that the lab had not been accredited by a
national organization because its position as a public health
agency and not a criminal justice agency was
unique.

“It is appalling that one chemist was able to
create such damage throughout the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts and we haven’t even seen the extent of the
damage yet,” said Rep. David Linsky, chair of the House Post
Audit and Oversight Committee.

Linsky said he was
particularly troubled by lack of accreditation, while Rep.
Harold Naughton, co-chair of the Committee on Public Safety,
said “my head almost explodes” when he hears about breaches in
evidence chains of custody. Naughton, a U.S. Army Reserves
captain, said Afghan police forces in Kandahar were doing a
better job of preserving chain of custody when he left that
country last year after helping to train law enforcement
personnel while on active duty.

In response to a
question from Republican Rep. Nick Boldyga, Bigby said she did
not believe there was a “culture of people trying to hide
problems” in the Department of Public
Health.

“Ultimately even with the checks and balances
and excellent policy and procedures, if an individual decides
to behave in this way I don’t know that it can always be
prevented,” Bigby said.

Bigby said that procedures at
the 17 remaining public health labs at the Hinton facility in
Boston have been reviewed by the Association of Public Health
Laboratories and federal accrediting agencies who found “no
major deficiencies.” The operations of the drug lab were
transferred in fiscal 2012 to the State
Police.

Heffernan told House lawmakers that the State
Police needed a $3.4 million infusion of state funding in
fiscal 2013, including $1.95 million in one-time
appropriations, to address a backlog of 10,300 drug samples
awaiting testing at the police drug crime lab in Sudbury. It
would take two years to clear the backlog with the additional
hires, Heffernan said.

The money would come out of Gov.
Deval Patrick’s budget request to the Legislature for $30
million to deal with the initial costs of the fallout from the
scandal, and Heffernan said it was needed to hire 24
additional chemists, to purchase equipment and to expand
existing lab space.

Heffernan also said the dire
predictions of hundreds or thousands of inmates being released
simultaneously as a result of their convictions being
overturned because of Dookhan’s action have not been as bad as
feared. The public safety chief said 388
offenders have been brought before judges so far, and as of
Nov. 10 only 195 have been released. Seventy-nine of those
released inmates were freed in Boston.

“If
you come to communities like mine, it is as bad as it looks,”
said Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez, a Jamaica Plain Democrat and
co-chair of the Committee on Public Health.

Major James
Connolly, commanding officer of the State Police Crime lab,
told lawmakers that the police labs are fully accredited and
the public should have faith that a similar miscarriage of
justice would be unlikely to happen again with the system of
check and balances in place.

“I’m confident it would
not go on. It would immediately be identified and corrected,”
Connolly said.

Cape and Islands District Attorney
Michael O’Keefe said he, too, was troubled by the fact that
the Hinton drug lab, when under the control of the Department
of Public Health, was not nationally accredited and therefore
lacked the rigorous quality controls needed.

“If that
had been done here as it should have been done, we wouldn’t be
talking about a period of time from 2003 to 2012,” O’Keefe
said.

Both O’Keefe and Plymouth County District
Attorney Timothy Cruz testified that the district attorneys
were committed to making sure justice is carried out for those
impacted, even if it means forfeiting convictions. The
prosecutors told lawmakers they were seeking $12.7 million
total to deal with the additional work of identifying and
disposing with impacted cases, and said resources in the
future for forensic labs will be critical.

“Any system
no matter how rigorously you regulate when stressed beyond its
capacity will eventually break down,” O’Keefe said.

The
$12.7 million request from county prosecutors is significantly
less than the $75 million that the Committee for Public
Counsel Services has requested, as reported by the Boston
Globe. According to the newspaper, public defenders also
pegged the total potential cost to the agency at $332 million
if all 190,000 cases processed between 2003 and 2012 – not
just those worked on by Dookhan – are compromised. “That’s not
the universe of cases,” Patrick said during a radio interview.
“There’s no evidence to suggest that that’s going to be
required.”

Noting the discrepancy, Rep. David Viera
said there was a “breakdown in the business model” of
prosecuting and defending the accused. “I don’t disagree with
the representative,” O’Keefe said, prompting Linsky to remark
on past “firestorms” O’Keefe has sparked when comparing the
budgets of public defenders and prosecutors.

Linksy
closed the hearing by asking the district attorneys as they
vet impacted cases to recognize the financial limits of the
state to fund the retrying of cases, particularly for those
convicted of crimes years ago whose punishments have
expired.

“When we’re dealing with scarce resources
please remember you are empowered with a tremendous amount of
discretion,” Linsky said.

By Matt Murphy
State House
News Service
Posted Nov 29, 2012 @ 03:26 PM

http://www.wickedlocal.com/burlington/news/x35745816/Hinton-drug-lab-scandal-lack-of-accreditation-may-have-contributed-to-problem#ixzz2DmHlyF9m

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19-12-2012, 01:21

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Re: UPDATED - Shutdown of
Massachusetts drug lab could jeopardize thousands of drug
c

'I
messed up bad': Chemist accused of deliberately faking test
results on drug samples indicted on 27
charges

~ Annie Dookhan, 35, accused of
deliberately faking test results on drug samples in criminal
cases was indicted on 27 charges on Monday
~ She was
indicted on 17 counts of obstruction of justice, eight counts
of tampering with evidence, perjury and pretending to hold a
college degree
~ The only motive authorities have described
is that Dookhan wanted to be seen as a good worker
~ Her
alleged misconduct led state police to shut down a state lab
used by police departments to test drugs in criminal cases
~ Dookhan is
scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in Suffolk Superior
Court

A Massachusetts chemist accused of
deliberately faking test results on drug samples in criminal
cases was indicted Monday on 27 charges, state Attorney
General Martha Coakley (picture attached below)
said.

Annie Dookhan, 35, of Franklin, was indicted by a
grand jury on 17 counts of obstruction of justice, eight
counts of tampering with evidence, perjury and pretending to
hold a college degree.

‘We allege that Annie Dookhan
tampered with drug evidence and fabricated test results on
multiple occasions,’ state Attorney General Martha Coakley
said. ‘Her alleged actions have sent ripple effects throughout
the criminal justice system.’

Dookhan's lawyer, Nicolas
Gordon, did not immediately return a call seeking comment on
the indictment.

Dookhan is scheduled to be arraigned
Thursday in Suffolk Superior Court.

Her alleged
misconduct led state police to shut down a state lab used by
police departments to test drugs in criminal
cases.

Since the lab was closed in August, judges have
released about 200 defendants from prison and put their cases
on hold while their lawyers challenge their convictions.

Many more cases could be affected because authorities
have said Dookhan tested more than 60,000 samples involving
34,000 defendants during her nine years at the
lab.

Dookhan
was first arrested in September on two counts of obstruction
of justice and one count of pretending to hold a
degree.

She pleaded not guilty to the original charges
and has been free on $10,000 bail. She has not publicly
commented on the accusations.

During her arraignment on
the original charges, Assistant Attorney General John Verner
said state police learned of Dookhan's actions after a chemist
at the lab said he had observed ‘many irregularities’ in
Dookhan's work.

Verner said Dookhan later acknowledged
to state police that she sometimes would test only five out of
15 to 20 samples but would list them all as positive for the
presence of a drug.

She also allegedly acknowledged
that sometimes, if a sample tested negative, she would take
known cocaine from another sample and add it to
the negative sample to make it test positive.

The only
motive authorities have described is that Dookhan wanted to be
seen as a good worker.

An assistant district attorney
in Norfolk County resigned in October after it was revealed
that he received sometimes-personal phone calls and emails
from Dookhan, a violation of protocols.

When she was
interviewed by state police in August, Dookhan said she just
wanted to get the work done and never meant to hurt
anyone.
‘I screwed up big-time,’ she is quoted as saying in
a summary of the interview. ‘I messed up bad; it's my fault. I
don't want the lab to get in trouble.’

Dookhan's
co-workers began expressing concern about Dookhan's work
habits several years ago, but her supervisors allowed her to
continue working.

She was by far the most productive
chemist in the lab, routinely testing more than 500 samples a
month, compared with the 50 to 150 tested by her
co-workers.

Dookhan
was suspended from lab duties after she was caught forging a
colleague's initials in June 2011.

She resigned in
March during an internal investigation by the Department of
Public Health. State police took over the lab in July as part
of a state budget directive.

Coakley said an
investigation by her office revealed that Dookhan allegedly
tampered with evidence by altering the substances in vials
being tested at the lab to cover up her alleged routine
practice of ‘dry labbing,’ a term used to describe visually
identifying samples instead of conducting required chemical
tests.

Typically, drug samples are then sent for a
second test. If the second test does not confirm the initial
results, the vial is sent back to the primary chemist.

Authorities allege that when samples were sent back to
Dookhan, she tampered with the vials before resubmitting them
to make them consistent with the inaccurate and positive
results reached as a result of her ‘dry
labbing.’

Coakley said recent testing done on these
samples by the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory
corroborates the allegations.

She said authorities
allege that Dookhan obstructed justice by falsely certifying
drug analyses when she knew the results were
compromised.

The drug certifications were submitted in
court as evidence and relied on by prosecutors and defense
attorneys.

Coakley said Dookhan obstructed justice and
committed perjury by falsely testifying during court
proceedings that she held a master's degree in chemistry from
the University of Massachusetts.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 07:01, 18 December 2012 | UPDATED:
07:03, 18 December 2012

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2249801/Chemist-accused-deliberately-faking-test-results-drug-samples-indicted-27-charges.html

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#48

05-04-2013, 05:05

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Massachusetts crime lab scandal
explodes

Massachusetts
crime lab scandal explodes

More than 300
convicted inmates have been released from Massachusetts state
prisons in the US as a result of the September 2012 arrest and
subsequent indictment of Annie Dookhan, who worked in a
Department of Public Health state laboratory and allegedly
falsified evidence used in criminal cases. Now the scandal has
grown with the prosecution of another Massachusetts state lab
chemist for tampering with evidence and stealing drugs seized as evidence.

Sonja
Farak [pictured, right], who worked at the Massachusetts State
Crime Laboratory in Amherst, was charged with tampering with
four drug samples stored at the lab on 1 April.
In two of the cases, authorities allege that Farak mixed drug
evidence samples with counterfeit drugs to hide her theft, and
in the two other cases the samples could not be found. She was
also charged with cocaine possession.

Attorney general
Martha Coakley said that Farak – who was originally arrested
in January, just months after the Dookhan scandal broke –
‘violated the trust placed in her’.

Question
marks

‘Every case she handled now has a huge
question mark around it,’ says Josh Lee, a criminal defense
attorney and founding partner of law firm Ward, Lee and Coats.
‘Such an individual is not going to be concerned with good
laboratory practices or proper evidence handling and testing,’
he adds.

If Farak was adulterating drug samples to
cover up her theft, as she is accused of doing, then that
could have influenced the weight of these samples and changed
the crime that suspects were charged with. ‘Changing weights
changes crimes and can, for example, elevate something from
drug possession to drug trafficking,’ Lee notes.

Farak
once worked at the same lab as Dookhan – the William Hinton
State Lab in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. That lab has been
closed since August, while the Amherst lab was closed in
January, pending further investigations.

The fact that
both Dookhan and Farak were employed at Hinton Lab indicates a
‘systemic problem’ with that particular facility, but the
failings are broader, according to Lee. ‘It is a bigger
problem than just Massachusetts, or just this particular lab,’
he tells Chemistry World.
Wild, wild west

A chemist
should be completely independent and not forced to answer the
commands of the head of a police department, Lee states. ‘They
need to get these labs out from under the control of law
enforcement,’ he says. In addition, he says that all work in
forensics labs should be videotaped to prevent similar
scandals, and even stop forensic scientists from cutting
corners.

Lee says the field of forensic science is
still a ‘wild, wild west’. He says the procedural safeguards
in place in other scientific fields, like genetics, are
lacking in forensics because it was created to serve law
enforcement.

While Lee says it is relatively common to
see errors and improper validation of tests at forensic labs,
Michael O’Keefe, the president of the Massachusetts District
Attorneys Association, disagrees. ‘This is very rare,’ O’Keefe
says. ‘I have been a prosecutor in Massachusetts for over 30
years, and have never seen this before.’ He notes, however,
that the Dookhan and Farak cases do highlight the difference
between Massachusetts state police crime labs and those under
the state’s Department of Public Heath, like Hinton and
Amherst once were. He describes the latter as lacking
‘rigorous forensic accreditation’.

The Massachusetts
state police took over Hinton and Amherst labs in July 2011,
and a spokesman suggests to Chemistry World that this change
is why Dookhan and Farak were charged.

The
repercussions of these two cases could be huge. The questions
raised about Dookhan’s work led to the review of 534 cases.
The Republican, a Massachusetts newspaper, reports that
lawyers for 11 men serving drug crime sentences have already
petitioned a judge for their temporary release because of
Farak’s involvement in their cases.

RSC Chemistry
World (Rebecca Trager reporting)
4th April 2013
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2013/04/us-massachusetts-forensic-lab-chemist-charged

Quote:

Seems like this scandal is just going to grow
and grow as the evidence comes out. One cannot help but
wonder how many other testing facilities out there have
similar problems, and how many legal matters this could
have inappropriately influenced.

Post Quality
Evaluations:

Thank you for updating this
thread with the new articles! This story just gets
bigger & bigger!

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#49

05-04-2013, 05:09

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Many Questions Still Unanswered
About the Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal

Many Questions Still
Unanswered About the Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal

It’s been
seven months since the Massachusetts Drug Lab scandal broke.
Why are we still in the dark about the mess that will
potentially cost Massachusetts $100 million?

By
now, you must have had your head under that proverbial rock if
you haven’t heard the words “Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal.”
On Dec. 17, 2012, former state employee Annie Dookhan, called
a “rogue chemist” by Governor Deval Patrick, was indicted on
27 charges, including 17 counts of obstruction of justice and
eight counts of tampering with evidence, stemming from her
misconduct at the Hinton State Laboratory
Institute.

Maybe it was the Ides of March, or maybe,
after seven months, we are just plain tired of hearing that
Dookhan is the biggest piece of the puzzle. Along with
enacting massive changes to our system, we need to clear up
more unanswered questions about how Massachusetts found itself
in this bonanza of a crisis, a scandal that is not just about
Annie Dookhan.

1. Was there so much pressure from
prosecutors to get guilty convictions that it impacted
Dookhan’s actions?

This question comes from Acton
Sen. James Eldridge, who was among those attending a public
forum titled “Unintended Consequences: Annie Dookhan and the
Drug War” on March 16 at the Maynard Public Library. Eldridge,
who has filed four criminal justice reform bills for the
2013-2014 legislative session and has been critical of
so-called “drug war” policies, rejects the idea that
prosecutors are impartial. While he stopped short of saying
there was direct prosecutorial involvement in the Dookhan
case, he did say, “In my experience with the Three-strikes
bill, district attorneys were behind closed doors trying to
ensure [its] passage.”

2. Why haven’t Norfolk’s
George Papachristos and others been under
indictment?

The Globe hinted in late 2012 at
concerns about unseemly prosecutorial involvement, stating
that Dookhan’s emails showed she had “ties to
prosecutors.”

3. Did someone or some groups
knowingly depend on Annie Dookhan for convictions, and did
anyone at the lab collude?

If you take a look at
the 100-page police report, you certainly will wonder why the
public isn’t getting more concrete answers about the
involvement of anyone whose last name isn’t Dookhan. And while
we can’t say there was some sort of explicit stake in the
outcome of Dookhan’s work, the report makes a relationship
between the Crime Lab and those who depended on its results
look questionable.

4. Why did Dookhan get the run of
the lab?

As mentioned in the report, she had codes,
keys, and access that belied her level at the
lab.

5. Why were so many at the lab concerned—yet
few did anything to stop her?

Several chemists
suspected she was falsifying reports and forging signatures,
and a couple of supervisors reported their concerns. In the
end, people made excuses, but Dookhan stayed on.

6.
Why were some Assistant District Attorneys disobeying protocol
by calling Dookhan directly instead of the Evidence
Office?

In the report, Lab Supervisor Peter Piro
indicates they were.

7. How could someone do an
audit of Dookhan’s work in 2010 and not find anything
wrong?

Dookhan started at the Hinton State Lab in
2003, and according to figures provided by the Department of
Public Health, in the year 2004 alone, “Dookhan tested 9,239
drug samples, more than three times the number typically
tested by the other chemists in the lab.”

8. Is
having evidence in Massachusetts cases investigated and tested
at a forensics lab run by the State Police instead of the
Department of Health really the best way to assure an unbiased
result?

Shutting down the Jamaica Plain and Amherst
labs—both are closed since another chemist from Northampton
was charged with tampering with drug evidence—created a
ripple-effect of issues. According to MetroWest, all testing,
formerly supervised by the Department of Public Health, is now
being performed at the Massachusetts State Police lab in
Sudbury. The backlog is enormous as prosecutors wait for
results. “Drug samples [have] mushroomed from 400 to 14,000 in
the seven months since the Annie Dookhan evidence tampering
scandal,” and this, MetroWest says, is “according to
police.”

9. So what about the defendants who have
been released as a result of the Dookhan
case?

Former Federal Judge Nancy Gertner recently
pointed out that “many are lamenting that defendants who have
been released as a result of the Dookhan case lack proper
supervision and are thus re-offending.” Her point? “These
defendants may well re-offend regardless, because the system
is so flawed.” Gertner goes on to suggest a need for
meaningful change: “If we reallocated resources from the
failed drug war and invested instead in things that actually
work—preventive programs to keep people out of the drug trade,
well-regulated laboratories for those who are prosecuted, or
on meaningful post-prison supervision,” then we’d have a
shot.

Boston Magazine (Metrocorp Inc., Jean
Trounstine reporting)
April 4th 2013
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/04/04/massachusetts-drug-lab-scandal/

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#50

05-04-2013, 05:12

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Drugs found lying around closed
Mass. lab

Drugs found lying around
closed Mass. lab

BOSTON (AP) — Investigators
looking through a state drug lab where an indicted chemist worked
found several samples strewn about, a state of disarray that
some lawyers say calls into question all testing at the
now-closed lab.

The former state Department of
Public Health lab in Boston was shut down in August after
state police discovered alleged widespread misconduct by
chemist Annie Dookhan. She has pleaded not guilty to 27 counts
of tampering with evidence, perjury and obstruction of justice
for allegedly mishandling drug samples or faking test results
on substances she never tested.

The scandal threatens
to jeopardize thousands of criminal convictions. Authorities
have said Dookhan tested drugs in about 34,000 cases during her nine
years at the lab.

State police reports turned over to
prosecutors and defense attorneys show that investigators for
state Inspector General Glenn Cunha found a plastic bag
containing a ‘‘white rock substance’’ and test tubes
containing unknown substances in a supervisor’s office. They
also found pills taped to a lab bench cabinet, as well as old
samples, including marijuana from 1996.

The fact that
drug samples were found lying around the lab shows that the
lab had broader problems that were not limited to Dookhan,
said Matthew Segal, legal director of the American Civil
Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

‘‘The documents
confirm that there were serious problems with how the lab was
run,’’ Segal said. ‘‘They confirm that when we talk about the
number of cases that are affected by this scandal, it’s not
just the 30-some thousand that Annie Dookhan touched. It’s
every case that went through the lab. That means it’s much
bigger and more costly and more messy than has been suggested
in the past.’’

Cunha is conducting a civil
investigation into the lab, including reviewing the lab’s
policies and procedures, while state Attorney General Martha
Coakley is conducting the criminal investigation.

The
reports describe visits to the lab by investigators in January
and February.

Boston Globe (Associated Press
report)
April 2nd 2013
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2013/04/02/drugs-found-lying-around-closed-mass-lab/6hAE483toCqchVBqFNsdZP/story.html

Post Quality
Evaluations:

Excellent updates Phen.
Seems this case just keeps on
growing.

Phenoxide

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