https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/12/04/kaczmarek-foster-verner-bar-overseers-drug-lab-hearings
When this scandal broke. Atty Gen. Maura Healey pointedly refused to investigate. Now each of the defendants in the BBO hearing seem to blame “the system” set up by the AG’s office for their failure to disclose evidence.
Has Healey done anything to change that system?
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I appreciate you posting this piece. Just for convenience, the link for the above URL is https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/12/04/kaczmarek-foster-verner-bar-overseers-drug-lab-hearings.
This is a shameful scandal that, in my opinion, reveals a deep, pervasive, and appalling failure of our statewide criminal justice system. Among other things, it is a case study of how the pervasive culture of corruption (both legal and illegal) in Massachusetts government hurts all of us.
I had hoped that Maura Healey would move beyond the already well-documented failings of her predecessor and mentor — Martha Coakley. She apparently has not.
While I like and very much want to support Ms. Healey, her failure to address this scandal is a serious impediment. In order for “justice” to mean anything at all, state-run laboratories must be beyond reproach and MUST be more than just tools to be manipulated by unscrupulous prosecutors. I fear that Ms. Healey has only perpetuated and compounded the already awful practices of Martha Coakley.
If our state judiciary is willing to do its job, then this scandal should force the release of more tens of thousands of defendants convicted, fined, and incarcerated over the last decade because of tainted and manufactured “evidence”. These tens of thousands of improper convictions will almost certainly — and properly — result in enormous awards for compensatory and punitive damages.
It is ironic that the complaint about Trumpism voiced most often and most loudly by we Democrats is the complaint that Trumpism is an attack on the rule of law itself.
It seems to me that this scandal shows that our own Democratic stars — and Maura Healey certainly has been one — have themselves been responsible for undermining that vital foundation here in Massachusetts.
This IS corruption. This IS precisely the kind of scandal that I expect Democratic officials to have zero tolerance for. Unless something very dramatic happens in the next few months, I will not be the only Massachusetts voter who will have a very hard time supporting Ms. Healey in a run for higher office.
What sad news this is about a once-promising Democrat in Massachusetts government.
Here’s an update on the story. https://www.wbur.org/considerthis/2021/03/31/attorney-general-healey-drug-lab-scandal
Apparently the AG has approved up to a $1,000,000 to pay the legal costs of the assistant AG’s involved in this scandal. WBUR reported this, again beating the Globe to this story. Nothing about this in yesterday’s paper or today’s. It’s almost as if the Globe wants this embarrassing story to go away.
Ironically, and I assume coincidentally, G Gordon Liddy’s death was also reported yesterday. Remember Liddy, Watergate, and the hush money paid to the plumbers?
Indeed, it would seem that the Globe avoids publishing stories that counter its chosen narrative on any given matter. Another irony is that the Globe similarly promoted Ms. Healey’s mentor and predecessor even while both drug-lab scandals were unfolding.
I do indeed well-remember the late G. Gordon Liddy. It is perhaps worth mentioning an aspect of the latter’s biography that I had forgotten — his Watergate sentences were commuted by none other than Jimmy Carter (in 1977) in the interest of “fairness”.