Let’s play “let’s pretend”.
Let’s pretend there is a medical laboratory that does blood and urine testing for all of the general practitioners in a particular region.
Now let’s pretend these same doctors are shareholders in a company that performs expensive and evasive diagnostic procedures.
And let’s pretend that if the medical laboratory reports back certain results after the scientific testing the doctors refer their patients to their company for the expensive diagnostic procedure.
Do you have all that? Ya with me? Sure you are. You’re not an idiot.
Now, suppose there’s a lab technician at the medical laboratory that’s a little wacky. Maybe a lot wacky. Maybe even a complete whack job. And suppose the whack job loves the fact she is working in the medical field. She’s part of a team and she wants to succeed. Wishes she was a doctor. Overzealous is too weak a description.
Plus she’ll flirt with the boys
Let’s add to this fact pattern that her work output is off the charts. She does twice as many blood and urine tests than anyone else in the lab.
Oh, and don’t forget there is no need ever for the lab technician to communicate with the doctor. The scientific results speak for themselves.
Now pretend she is obsessed with satisfying the doctors, the doctors become aware of this, and because they have a vested interest they encourage her to come back with findings that require a referral for the expensive diagnostic procedure.
The doctors routinely manipulate her to return findings favoring their business and not their patients.
Meanwhile the procedure has moderate to high risks and some patients have become permanently disabled.
Now let’s bring in the woman’s husband. He loves her but knows she has some mental health issues. He has a strong suspicion she is finagling the numbers and putting patients at risk. He tells her bosses. They do nothing.
End of pretend game.
Any thoughts?
This is exactly what many Massachusetts prosecutors did with Annie Dookhan. Yet they escape any discipline and the crazy lady went to the can.
To these slimy district attorneys Annie Dookhan was like having the juke box at the malt shop broken so it plays songs free when hit it in the right place (by the right person)
See how it works folks?
Where the hell were the women groups on this?
Where was the Globe?
Oh, wait. I forgot. We never question prosecutors. I think it is time we start. They are the establishment you know? Isn’t this the revolution?
JimC says
Was the flirting ever established beyond the one guy? Any chance it was overblown?
Dookhan clearly had issues, but the flirting angle might have been exaggerated because she’s attractive.
SomervilleTom says
The “flirting” was widely reported in pieces like this.
When the “one guy” is a District Attorney, and the flirtatious email exchanges involve her handling of evidence for cases he is handling, then I don’t see it as “overblown”.
It was enough that her husband, with whom she was in the midst of a protracted divorce, made several threatening contacts with the DA.
The fact that one woman could do such damage to tens of thousands of defendants (the estimates I hear are of 30,000 to 40,000 compromised cases) and NOBODY else was prosecuted strongly suggests a desire, on the part of the Attorney General at that time (Martha Coakley) to make sure there were no prosecutions.
The treatment of Annie Dookhan reeks of corruption. Her flirtation with a DA is a relevant and significant part of the fact pattern — as is the lack of interest in pursuing his knowledge of her illegal behavior.
JimC says
Here’s what your link says; cap mine.
Singular construction; one prosecutor. The link also has a picture, as nearly every story about Dookhan did.
My point is simply that the flirting angle was helpful to the story and might not be all that relevant. To Ernie’s point, her efficiency and effectiveness (though fraudulent) were more relevant.
They should have suspected a problem. Maybe they did.
SomervilleTom says
One prosecutor, allegedly investigated, and subsequently exonerated. The pieces I have read suggest that her email exchanges with that prosecutor were not unique. I think that’s what the thread-starter has suggested, and I think that suggestion is supported by the coverage of the scandal.
In my view, the relevance of the flirtatious behavior is the extent to which it was an aspect of her enthusiastic support of all or most of the prosecutors she worked with.
Finally, so far, it appears that the “investigation” of Massachusetts prosecutors who worked with Ms. Dookhan for years was about as credible as the many internal investigations operated by the FBI — each one of which exonerates the department.
judy-meredith says
Should I be?
SomervilleTom says
In my view, this piece and this case is not about Annie Dookhan. The Watergate Burglary was not about Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Eugenio Martínez, and Frank Sturgis.
This scandal is about the REST of the Massachusetts criminal justice system. In my view, Ms. Dookhan has paid the price for the crime.
I want to know when, if ever, the men and women who enabled her for years and then threw her under the bus will pay their price for their part of this massive conspiracy to shred the rights of defendants.
I am disappointed, but not surprised, that Ms. Coakley had so little interest in this enormous scandal. It would be awesome if our current Attorney General would revisit the decisions of her predecessor. I’m not holding my breath.
SomervilleTom says
Some of us were concerned. Some of us wrote about it here. Some of us included this in the long list of reasons why opposed Ms. Coakley as Attorney General, and why we did not support Ms. Coakley for Governor.
It is nauseating to me that Ms. Dookhan is the ONLY person who was prosecuted for this massive and long-lasting corruption of our criminal justice system. Ms. Coakley was the AG during most of that period.
I expect an Attorney General to set high standards of integrity for EVERY prosecutor. I believe that this entire scandal demonstrated that in this case our prosecutors had no standards AT ALL — before or after Ms. Dookhan was thrown under the bus.