Just asking. I am not a lawyer.
I suppose there are arguments against this — I don’t know, some drug kingpin walks? — but I don’t see how anyone really big is in jail just because of Dookhan.
Make no mistake, she ruined lives by fabricating evidence. This is just about the worst thing a justice system can do.
Let them all go, I say.
Please share widely!
Christopher says
I’m not a lawyer either, but my inclination is to see if each cases might reasonably have gone the same way even without evidence touched by Dookhan.
JimC says
n/t
bob-gardner says
. . . on the results of a trial, why are the taxpayers paying for those tests?
Andrei Radulescu-Banu says
There’s supposed to be redundant evidence available precisely to eliminate the possibility of someone fudging with the evidence.
Christopher says
…I would say new trials would be in order rather than “let them all go”.
JimC says
And if it isn’t, why isn’t it, BMG lawyers?
centralmassdad says
My understanding (as a commercial guy who was just out of law school when that stupid movie came out) is that double jeopardy requires a judgment of acquittal on a charge. If they throw out the convictions, that doesn’t mean judgments of acquittal. So they get a new trial.
JimC says
Vacate — which I interpret as the legal form of annul, like it never happened.
Whatever the right term is, do that. The state F’d up; it probably (collectively) knew, on some level. The easiest route that serves the greatest number of citizens is to vacate all the cases.
Andrei Radulescu-Banu says
It’s not a question of serving the largest number of citizens; it’s a case of following the law. I don’t think there is even precedent for the SJC to invalidate ‘en masse’ a group of convictions. Judgement should be on a case by case basis, based on precedent and case law.
JimC says
But there’s a practical side; reviewing 40,000 cases would take years.
We have clear, established malfeasance by a state official, so I say set a new precedent and throw the cases out.
Mark L. Bail says
them on television. It’s not double jeopardy. It’s a more like mistrial (except that happens during a trial). It’s an “error” after the trial concludes. The remedy would be in appeals court. It would be double jeopardy to retry the people previously found innocent.
The real problems are the review of all the cases the DA has to make and then decide what to do. They can’t fight all the cases on appeal. Question to answer: Did they have enough evidence to convict without the drug testing? Has the person convicted already served his time? Will the convicted person sue? Does the convict have grounds for appeal? Is there enough evidence without the drug testing to retry the person after a successful appeal?
Almost all will have grounds, since they can say there was reasonable doubt that the drug evidence was tampered with if it went through Annie Dookhan. If it was the “drug” that led to probable cause for further searching, there could be “fruit of the poisonous tree” issues.
TheBestDefense says
From WBUR last month
SomervilleTom says
In response to Christopher’s reasonable concerns, the SJC could perhaps offer a choice: Either vacate the conviction or retry the case.
I would add that it seems to me that there should be some way for victims of this shameful episode to recover substantial civil penalties from either the Commonwealth or from the prosecutors involved.
Lives and careers were ruined, and compensation should be paid.
centralmassdad says
What a difficult situation. My understanding of the way that compensation is paid in situations like this is that the defendants have to show more than just that a state officcial did something that wronged them, but rather that there was a policy to do that set by someone with authority, or inadequate training, or something.
They may also have to show that they could not have been convicted without the false evidence, which might also be tough, and makes it hard to deal with the cases as one size fits all.
Mark L. Bail says
have first say on this. The SJC would make a decision, not offer a choice. Their job isn’t public policy or fairness, it’s to decide on the merits of the law.
The convicted could sue, if they could afford it, and if they think they could convince a jury or judge in civil court that they were, in fact, not guilty or suffered some sort of harm.
I don’t know if a class action suit would be appropriate.
Christopher says
This is not something I followed closely. Is Dookhan accused of being careless with chain of custody, deliberately falsifying evidence to get convictions, or what?
TheBestDefense says
Dookhan admitted to
according to Wiki, not my favorite source but generally how I remember it.
JimC says
Link
Christopher says
…she got lazy with her work and then felt the need to cover that up?
JimC says
She lied systematically for quite a long time.
Her husband told the press she’s a pathological liar. (Nice guy.)
But she’s a symptom here; five times the normal rate had to raise red flags. Prosecutors had to know there was a problem, and they didn’t address it because the problem was slanted in their favor.
jas says
there has been indications of bias towards prosecution (as opposed to neutrality)
http://archive.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2012/12/20/indicted-drug-analyst-annie-dookhan-mails-reveal-her-close-personal-ties-prosecutors/A37GaatHLKfW1kphDjxLXJ/story.html
SomervilleTom says
Ms. Dookhan, from all appearances, was excessively eager to please prosecutors. Evidence was presented during her court appearances that she was particularly flirtatious with at least one, and that there was a sexual component to her desire to please her clients (even if not consummated). In short, she was — for years — abusing the rights of defendants in order to curry favor with prosecutors.
I find the premise that those prosecutors didn’t know this was happening to be completely unbelievable. I think they knew full well and were happy to let her take the consequences.
Andrei Radulescu-Banu says
I think you’re right to suspect others knew of this and let things go on unchallenged.
What confidence do we have that this tainting of evidence is not continuing to go on?
ryepower12 says
the state should use statistical analysis to check every lab worker in its testing facilities. Normal human beings can only do so much work, and statistically there should be some average number of how often a test comes back as negative or positive. Statistical analysis should be able to determine if anyone’s work is an extreme outlier. Even a cursory look at Dookhan’s results and sheer caseload should have raised eyebrows long, long ago. (And, as SomervilleTom keeps pointing out, I bet it did raise at least a few eyebrows — but was willfully ignored, likely by many prosecutors and others who were all too happy with the results.)
Mark L. Bail says
on Wikipedia.
She lived in Franklin, maybe JTM knows her?
hesterprynne says
that may result in a global remedy for the Dookhan defendants. Two years ago the SJC ruled that in any case on which Dookhan worked as a chemist (as opposed to merely signing a report based on the work of other chemists), the defendant is entitled to a presumption of egregious government misconduct. The presumption applies not only to people convicted of drug offenses but also people who entered guilty pleas rather than face trial (those who pled guilty must also show, for example, that knowing of the government misconduct might have led them to make a different plea decision).
As has been pointed out upthread, many of the defendants have already served their sentences. In addition, the logistics of providing all the defendants with counsel for a new prosecution would overwhelm the Committee for Public Counsel Services (the understaffed and underfunded agency that AmberPaw works for). And in May we learned of misconduct committed by another state chemist. What a mess.
A link to the SJC’s November case is here.
SomervilleTom says
Indeed, what a mess.
It continues to be hard for me to believe that the Attorney General at the time didn’t have some inkling of all this. I understand the difficult position Ms. Healey is in today. Sadly, it appears that this is likely to make Ms. Healey’s job much harder over the next few years.
I certainly hope there is some way for those who have already served their time to be compensated for the devastating impact of this “egregious government misconduct”. I hear you loud and clear about the burden all this places on the Committee for Public Counsel Services.
This is, indeed, a real mess. It seems to me that the burden should CLEARLY be on those allowed this travesty to occur (not just once, as we now know). SOMEBODY in state government knew this was going down. Those who knew did nothing. In my view, they had and have a proactive obligation to ensure that such “egregious government misconduct” was halted — they failed to perform that obligation.
The victims of this misconduct should NOT have to suffer more.
TheBestDefense says
More wild anti-Coakley accusations. It is not just tiresome, it corrupts our public discourse. You do understand that the AG does not prosecute drug crime like the Dookhan kind and that they are prosecuted by DAs, right? right?
SomervilleTom says
Of course I understand that the AG does not directly prosecute these.
I also understand, perhaps incorrectly, that DAs ultimately are under the purview of the AG’s office. From the current AGO website:
I am just a voter, property owner, and resident of the state for 40+ years. I look to the AG to be the executive responsible for seeing that things like this don’t happen. It is not a “wild anti-Coakley accusation” to observe that:
– This happened while Ms. Coakley was the AG
– This was years-long “egregious misconduct”
– The means to detect such lab issues have been available for decades and either weren’t in place for this lab or were ignored.
I’ll tell you what “corrupts our public discourse”. What corrupts our public discourse is to be so passionate about “protecting” individual politicians that we utterly ignore preventable disasters like this.
If Martha Coakley was NOT the correct executive to detect and address this early on, who IS?
If Maura Healey is not the correct executive to address these issues today, who is?
Who is guarding the guards?
Christopher says
…are directly and independently elected at the county level. The blockquotes you provide do not list DAs. I’m sure there is co-ordination, but DAs ultimately do not report and are not accountable to the AG.
SomervilleTom says
I suppose that “co-ordination” is what I mean. I know that DAs are independently elected. For that matter, the AG is independently elected — and still viewed as part of the administration of whomever is governor.
Similarly, SOMEBODY was responsible for certifying the drug lab. Surely defense attorney’s routinely challenge evidence provided by the lab, and surely the response to those challenges involves some sort of formal certification. WHO does that?
My point here is that the public doesn’t care nearly as much about the dotted-i’s and crossed-t’s of what department reports to what person as it cares that SOMEBODY watches over things like this — the AG is the public face that state government presents about such matters.
The public cares that when prosecutors use obviously falsified evidence for YEARS, from labs that are certified by the state, SOMEBODY screwed up. The howls of outrage about “wild accusations” ring extremely hollow when, at the end of the day, the only person punished in all this was a disturbed young woman, together with tens of thousands of defendants whose rights were shredded.
Who guards the guards, if not the AG?
TheBestDefense says
You wrote
The AG is NOT part of a gubernatorial administration. You are just flat wrong on this point. Are you seriously suggesting that Healey is part of the Baker admin? She won an election to a four year term, independent of Baker. What part of this do you not understand?
When you voice your broken understanding of government on these pages you damage our discourse. The Commonwealth is not a corporation. We do not have a CEO or a CFO. We have independently elected and appointed officials (Exec, Lege and Judicial) , usually described as the three legged stool, but mistakenly so. That is a simplistic explanation but you dumb it down even more.
Yes, your attempt to blame Coakley is a “wild accusation” based on zero facts and a horrible understanding of democracy. Since you want to double down, I am calling you on it. It is time for an apology to a decent woman who had no role in the Dookhan scandal.
Christopher says
…there would be an oversight role for Congress. I guess I assume the General Court could take similar initiative to make sure things were being handled properly.
TheBestDefense says
It is NOT the job of the AG, neither Coakley nor Healey, to oversee the daily operations of DAs. That is your and my job, as voters. In two years you have the opportunity to throw out Middlesex DA Marian Ryan, who needs the boot IMNSHO.
BTW, I am not passionate about protecting Coakley. She is a decent person and was a good AG. But you are as obsessed with hanging her as you are with defending the worst of the Clintons’ behavior. I still remember you denying Coakley’s role as the leader in taking on the EPA to regulate GHG emissions. It was a truly sad moment when I read your words. She was a national leader and for those of us who spend great amounts of our time working on energy and climate change, your comments were equal measure of ignorant and mean, pure fabrication.
SomervilleTom says
These were state-sanctioned labs. The prosecutors are paid by the state. The “egregious misconduct” was performed by state employees using the full power and authority of the state. Telling me that it’s my job, as a voter, to somehow fix this only perpetuates the problem.
I’m not disputing your accounting of the situation. I’m saying that this was terrible, egregious misconduct, it went on for years, and may be going on today.
That’s just broken, regardless of what we might feel about various prior men and women who’ve been AG.
TheBestDefense says
Broken government yes, but you blamed Coakley. When you make those kind of nasty and un-informed comments, you should publicly apologize. She is a person.
SomervilleTom says
Great. So you get on here and again berate me, and still you duck the question. Let’s stipulate, for this discussion, that I’m an utter monkey-turd and Satan’s spawn incarnate. SO WHAT?
How do we know this won’t happen again?
If preventing egregious prosecutorial misconduct like this is NOT the job of the AG, then whose job IS it?
So far, the closest you’ve come to an answer is that our fault — you and me — for electing the DAs involved.
Is that REALLY the best you’ve got?
TheBestDefense says
Let’s be clear. You want to blame someone but have chosen the wrong person in again slandering Coakley. This is degenerate politics, the worst kind.
You wrote
As I pointed out previously, it is the job of voters to hold DAs accountable. It is called democracy. Majority rule. Sometimes the majority makes mistakes but that is a judgement call. When ADAs f-up either their boss or their victims are the appropriate complainants. Not you blaming an elected official who has nothing to do with the issue.
You, OTOH, make up stuff based on who you hate and lack of knowledge.
TheBestDefense says
I blame, in order:
-)people who commit corrupt acts
-) and the asshats who sling crap against people with no role in it, which means we won’t find the guilty parties
Don’t even think of putting me in a category with you. I do not make up stuff about the AG.
I don’t know it won’t happen again. I assume it will happen in some form in the future. Again, this is a democracy where people, agencies and even democracy itself will fail us sometimes.
I don’t think you are monkey-turd and Satan’s spawn, as per your words. I just thing you are desperately wrong and incapable of understanding that democracy sometimes results in less than optimal choices. We have a classic case in DA Conley, but since neither you nor I live in Suffolk County there is not much we can do except speak. But make it the truth STom, and don’t blame Coakley.
And I am not berating you, just holding you accountable for false and nasty comments. After a half century of political work in the greater Boston area, I am quite sure I have never met you doing ANYTHING.
SomervilleTom says
The “truth” is that a state-sponsored lab delivered tens of thousands of flagrantly falsified test results spanning years. The truth is that such failures are readily picked up by routine QA tests that labs and manufacturing lines have used routinely for decades. I’ll happily cite chapter and verse if you care.
You’re in a snit (again) because I blame the AG for allowing this travesty to occur. Not surprisingly, you offer a mealy-mouthed — but of course VERY aggressively phrased — response that says “shit happens”.
Your response is not good enough for a society that values the rule of law. It just isn’t. You can trash me as much as you want, and it’s not going to change that.
Deval Patrick should have stopped it. Martha Coakley should have stopped it. The DAs should have stopped it. Nobody did. I’m sorry that troubles your oh-so-thin skin. So what.
This kind of easily preventable gross misconduct should not happen in this state. Period.
TheBestDefense says
I detest what Dookhan did. I think that many prosecutors probably knew something was going on, but they were all at the county level. None of their malfeasance went to the AGs office. It is a pond scum accusation when you fabricate that stuff. Please learn the difference between an independently elected DA and the statewide elected AG. Neither Ms Coakley not Ms Healey deserve the crap you are implying.
Don’t try to pin this on me and don’t pretend you were a crusader on this issue. You came to the game five years too late for that. Neither the former AG (Coakley) nor the current AG (Healey) had anything to do with this.
Obviously you have never worked in government nor in a place where there is a chain of command/responsibility more than three deep.
SomervilleTom says
You are certainly a piece of work.
Amidst all your bluster, you still land in the same place. It is certainly clear that Ms. Coakley did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to assure that the state lab was producing valid results. Nobody else did anything either. According to you, Ms. Healey is in the same place today (I actually have spoken with her, face-to-face, and I think you are misrepresenting her position).
You don’t know shit about where I have and have not worked. You also clearly don’t know shit about how labs and manufacturing lines are operated, and about the tools and techniques that industry uses to avoid such debacles.
Whether chain of command/responsibility is one deep, three deep, or one hundred deep, the obligation to monitor ANY lab remains the same, as do the tools to do so. How deep do you think the chain of command/responsibility is at Volkswagen? Do you agree that it’s likely to be more than three deep? I note that the Volkswagen CEO is taking a different stance from what you so loudly defend. Executive heads rolled at Volkswagen. Absolutely NOTHING comparable has happened here, and you loudly defend the inaction and attack me for criticizing that inaction.
Ms. Dookhan has paid her price. She was convicted and incarcerated and has done her time — that’s not the point here. The point is that you apparently do NOT detest the consequences of this failure enough to advocate for doing ANYTHING about it. Instead, you yell and stomp your feet at me.
If you don’t want this sort thing pinned on you and people like you, then I suggest you spent rather more effort on how to stop these failures and rather less time insulting me. The QA and monitoring techniques for a lab like this are BASIC and have been known for decades. Had they been in place, Ms. Dookhan’s falsifications would have been discovered within days or at most weeks, rather than years.
She’s paid her price. It’s time those who enabled this egregious misconduct to pay THEIRS. When you attack me about this, you join the ranks of those enablers.
TheBestDefense says
You keep coming back to the notion that Coakley and Healey are responsible for the Dookhan affair. Of course it is a fabrication, a flat out lie.
There was a corrupt lab pharmacists named Dookhan. Some District Attorneys used her fraudulent reports. We might someday learn how much they knew, but you surely don’t have a clue. None.
None of this relates to the office of the Attorney General, present or past. Any other comments you make about this subject are a lie, a gross distortion of reality.
TheBestDefense says
But you are right, I am a piece of work, as you wrote/accused.
I have been involved in politics for more than a half century. Not your armchair kind. Done more in my life in MA politics than you ever dreamed, even before you moved here. Consulted with multiples of foreign governments, even was arrested in a few countries.
Don’t pretend you know about clear government. What the f- is your junk about VW and how this relates to the local DAs? And why do you continue to fabricate a connection to Healey and Coakley?
SomervilleTom says
Interesting that Ms. Coakley, as AG, would investigate the Dookhan issue in 2012 (emphasis mine):
It certainly sounds to me as though after the fact and after the scandal was revealed, Ms. Coakley felt enough responsibility to talk to the media and to audiences about her own investigation. It certainly seems that she conducted some sort of investigation. Why would she do that if these agencies were as disconnected as you assert?
If it was appropriate for her to conduct this investigation after the fact, why is it so inappropriate for some of us to expect the AG’s office to ensure that such processes be done proactively, to PREVENT such disasters?
Similarly, the Boston Globe reported similar issues in 2015 related to the Sonja Farak case. At that time, Maura Healey articulated a position very different from yours (emphasis mine):
I did not assert that Ms. Healey was responsible for the Dookhan affair. I do assert that the AG’s office has been involved in the investigation of this since it was revealed — your loud protestations notwithstanding.
Your career in Massachusetts politics is, frankly, irrelevant to this discussion.
Oh, and regarding the VW scandal — you raised the question of “chain of responsibility”:
Apparently, even given your deep knowledge of politics, you have no clue about how complex organizations keep disasters like this from happening and how those organizations handle things when they do.
I cited VW because, as that scandal emerged, executives at VW took responsibility for the failures and for making organizational changes to reinforce that responsibility. They did NOT emulate your model here, claiming “not my problem”, “didn’t know about it”, “independent office”, and so on.
Ms. Coakley and Ms. Healey both took public actions and made public statements reflecting their recognition that the AG’s office has a responsibility to prevent this sort of egregious misconduct. The executives at the top of VW similarly took actions and made public statements acknowledging their responsibility for the emissions scandal.
You can deny all that if you like, it doesn’t change reality.
judy-meredith says
Thanks Hester
methuenprogressive says
Set ’em free. Everything she’s ever touched is tainted.
Christopher says
Is there a question of what a substance even is? Have defendants been caught with a powder that law enforcement says is cocaine and the defendant claims is not? Is it that common for such a basic fact to be in dispute that it has to be actually tested?
jas says
what the substance is actually is the primary question that has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Trickle up says
what jas said.
Christopher says
Obviously it has to actually be the substance, but I just didn’t think that point would often be in dispute. In other words, I can see a defendant saying, “Officer, that cocaine you found with me isn’t mine; it’s my friend’s/sibling’s/cousin’s,” but I wasn’t aware people would try, “Officer, that powder isn’t cocaine; it’s just my laundry detergent (or something).”
SomervilleTom says
It would appear that in at least one case, it WAS “laundry detergent (or something)”.
The point is that Ms. Dookhan planted “evidence” that wasn’t there. It’s very likely that an innocent defendant was found guilty as a result.
petr says
…laundry detergent is a common adulterant used to ‘cut’ cocaine, Without defending Ms Dookhans’ actions, I simply note that laundry detergent is a common substance found in the presence of cocaine.
jas says
Usually a person under suspicion doesn’t say yes this is cocaine or no it is not cocaine. if the defense attorney is lucky – the person does not say anything. Sometimes, they will “that is my friends, I don’t know what it is”.
And as one can tell if something is cocaine just by looking at it – virtually all drugs are tested despite what an officer might believe which is why there are thousands and thousands of tests – and the cases here may be in the range of 40,000).
Finally – what also needs to be tested is the actual weight as in some cases the amount of the drug is critical as to whether the charge is simple posession or intent to distribute.
jas says
as one can NOT tell if something is cocaine just by looking at i
petr says
… needs to be tested. It’s not uncommon for cocaine to be ‘cut’ with adulterants such as laundry detergent, laxatives, etc… makes the ‘product’ go farther…
TheBestDefense says
Last month I left my car window open, it rained and the rug got wet. I vacuumed the water and poured baking soda on the still damp rug to stop any odors from developing. If I had been stopped by police who saw a pile of white powder on my floor and Dookhan were working, I might very well have ended up in jail.
methuenprogressive says
“to samples in which no cocaine was present.”
ryepower12 says
she wouldn’t have flagrantly violated the law to put it in.
‘Nuff said.
petr says
… most evidence I’ve seen suggests that Ms. Dookhan wasn’t properly trained (she didn’t have the degrees she said she had) and very quickly got in over her head. after that, a large portion of what she did, it appears to me, was meant to hide the fact of her incompetence. She lied, and then she lied more to cover up the lies, and then in fact, constructed a compensatory super-pleaser+high-productivity persona to smooth over questions, and began cutting corners under the stress of maintaining that persona. None of what she did, as bad as it was, had anything to do with evidence being central to a specific case. She was just in over her head. She’s a sad, possibly mentally ill, person who deliberately tampered with evidence for reasons having little or nothing to do with particular cases.
This is, of course, an insufficient answer to the original question, “Should the SJC just vacate…?” I don’t have a sufficient answer to that. I’m not sure, however, I can get behind the notion that she ‘ruined lives’ by fabricating evidence. if a cop or cops made a cocaine bust that later tested only laundry detergent, but which was ‘fabricated’ by Ms. Dookhan to contain cocaine, I think the cops are as culpable for the ‘ruined life’ (if, in fact, it is the case that a life was ruined) as Ms. Dookhan… and so the problem, if problem it is, goes beyond her. (Given that, as noted, laundry detergent is commonly use to adulterate cocaine, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that a cocaine bust will contain laundry detergent and bring same to the lab for testing… so the presence of laundry detergent isn’t, per se, an indication that you’re not dealing with cocaine. Which, coincidentally or not, is why we should be absolutely rigorous with testing.)
stomv says
but she surely is culpable. I have no idea if the word “fabricated” is technically correct in her case.
Clearly, her job was to handle evidence to get truth and justice for defendants and society at large. Not only did she not do that, but she willfully didn’t do that, and willfully covered it up.
She contributed an awful lot of harm to an awful lot of people.
petr says
… As a description of her actions, this is pretty spot on. It also encompasses the consequences of her actions. I have little disagreements with it.
I was speaking directly to the imputation of motive made by ryepower12. He made the definitive statement ” if it wasn’t central to the case, she wouldn’t have flagrantly violated the law to put it in”. I’ve seen no evidence that suggests she did anything to sway one case one way or the other. She manufactured a certain job position/persona and then lied to maintain that. In several instances,I’m given to understand, she added cocaine samples to substances, not because she wanted to secure a conviction, but because she had already signed off on an analysis and other chemists couldn’t replicate her results. She would have had to admit, and apparently wasn’t capable of admitting, that she had not done the earlier analysis properly, if at all. (ref, tangled web, deception, etc…) This is different from deliberately adding cocaine for the purpose of securing a conviction.
I was also speaking to the original diarists blanket assertion that she ruined lives. As you point out, she contributed harm, but I don’t think she was in a position to ruin lives all by her self. Most chemists know what they are working with, and are working to manufacture and/or refine that known substance. Chemists in a crime lab only verify or deny the assertion of the police, or the DA, that such and such a substance is really such and such a substance. If she botched the analysis, providing a false positive, then the cop may have made a false arrest and/or the DA may be prosecuting a false case…
SomervilleTom says
My wife and I have worked in the biopharm industry. Confirming that labs are reliable has been part of industry protocol for an eternity. Companies don’t necessarily always follow such protocols, but a LOT is known.
I’m profoundly disturbed that our state-run labs apparently didn’t and as far as I know still do not follow similar protocol. What I’m talking about are documented and defined processes where test samples are submitted to the lab (without the lab’s knowledge, of course) and the lab results compared to benchmarks.
This scandal is much larger than Ms. Dookhan. I want to know whether or not standard QA protocols were followed for these labs. If not, why not. If so, then how did these issues go “undetected” for so long?
Some lab is doing similar tests today. Is THAT facility under more detailed scrutiny?
Who guards the guards?