I think we need a quorum to get to the bottom of the drug lab scandal.
"Freed amid scandal, they soon found trouble again; Thousands of drug case convictions were abruptly open to challenge after state chemist Annie Dookhan was accused of misconduct. Many released have committed new crimes, but not the tidal wave feared" by William Frothingham and Scott Allen | Globe Correspondent | Globe Staff, August 25, 2013
“The integrity of our constitution the courts and the liberties of all mankind are at stake,” wrote Carlton Haynes, now back behind bars, as part of the crime wave that law enforcement officials predicted a year ago when judges began releasing inmates — some with long records of drug-dealing and violence — over concerns about Annie Dookhan’s role in their cases. The only question, said Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis last October, is “how much damage Ms. Dookhan has done to our crime-reduction efforts.”
Related: Obama Dreaming of Davis For DHS?
Does racism do anything to our system?
At least we know where he got such ideas.
Now, a Globe analysis shows that the scandal has led to measurably increased crime in cities such as Boston and Brockton. While the Dookhan defendants’ release has not unleashed the tidal wave some feared, offenders returned to the street have already figured in three killings, either as suspects or victims.
Wave wasn't a tidal wave, but the Globe backs up the cops. What a shock.
One year after the public first learned about the alleged misdeeds of Annie Dookhan, the Globe review of court records shows that more than 600 so-called Dookhan defendants have had convictions against them erased or temporarily set aside, or they’ve been released on bail pending a new trial. Of those, at least 83 have been re-arrested — about 13 percent of the total — and 16 have been arrested more than once for crimes ranging from possessing a pound of cocaine to vandalizing cars outside a Hyannis pub....
And there may be many more to come. A special counsel to Governor Deval Patrick concluded this week that Dookhan’s negligent or dishonest work as a drug analyst at the Hinton state lab in Jamaica Plain affected more than 40,000 drug defendants in nine years. Though most either never went to jail or have already been released, hundreds remain locked up. Many of those are now clamoring for freedom because of Dookhan’s role in their cases.
So all the framing was ineffectual?
To defense lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, the scandal represents the greatest miscarriage of justice in the state in many years, tainting every case Dookhan touched regardless of the defendant’s record.
Absolutely!
“Regardless of any other issues Mr. Haynes has, Annie Dookhan’s misconduct and widespread problems at the Hinton drug lab have made it such that Mr. Haynes received an unfair trial and the Commonwealth obtained unfair convictions on these drug charges,” said Haynes’s lawyer , Kathryn Hayne Barnwell.
It's an unhappy and unfortunate truth, but government is no longer to be trusted.
But the spike in crime since the Dookhan scandal also offers a grim snapshot of the drug war’s revolving door as people who have been handed the ultimate get-out-of-jail card get right back into legal trouble again, sometimes with astonishing speed....
Right next to it is the revolving door between lobbyi$ts and politicians.
Despite the gloomy, if predictable, statistics on re-arrested Dookhan defendants, DeMore and others in the justice system know the crime wave is so far not as big as many feared in the early days after the scandal broke....
Ever notice the agenda-pushing media pushes fear at every turn?
The rest is DA bitching while the "criminals" are identified.
--more--"
They all look like criminals to me, including the regional flagshit.
"Drug mishandling may have tainted 40,000 cases" by David Abel and John R. Ellement | Globe Staff, August 20, 2013
The criminal cases of more than 40,000 people in Massachusetts may have been tainted by chemist Annie Dookhan and management failures at the now-closed state Department of Public Health lab where she worked, according to a long-awaited report released Tuesday by a special counsel hired by the Patrick administration.
What was a bag of crack doing on the director's office desk?
That final tally, painstakingly compiled by Boston defense attorney David Meier since the scandal broke a year ago, includes 2,769 more people than he had previously estimated, bringing to 40,323 the total number of people potentially affected by Dookhan’s alleged mishandling of drug evidence.
Most of those cases involved minor charges, including possession of small amounts of drugs, Meier said at a State House press conference presenting his findings.
It's not a minor mandatory if convicted!
“My hope is that as a result of these efforts, each and every individual who was potentially affected . . . will have an opportunity to have his or her case reviewed by prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges and that the system will have the opportunity to get it right,” Meier said.
That can only happen with a blanket release despite the risks.
The report was immediately criticized by the state’s public defender agency and the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, who said the administration’s final tally does not fully capture the damage done to individual defendants.
“The whole thing is disturbing,’’ said Anthony Benedetti, chief counsel for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, which had previously argued that all 190,000 cases sent through the Department of Public Health lab since the early 1990s are now suspect and should be dismissed. “I think every one of the 40,000 cases she touched should be thrown out. Whether it was possession or distribution [of illegal drugs], the conviction is tainted because of the conduct of Annie Dookhan.’’
Matthew Segal, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said the state’s criminal justice system must do more to help those whose civil rights may have been violated by Dookhan and her superiors.
“David Meier’s announcement today confirms that we are no closer to solving this problem,’’ Segal said. “There are 40,000 people whose convictions have been potentially tainted, and the vast majority of them haven’t had a day in court. Merely identifying them isn’t justice.’’
Administration officials noted Tuesday that some of the thousands of cases — they did not know how many — were resolved without convictions, either through dismissal or some type of plea bargain.
Yeah, when the defendant thought the government had the goods. From now on you fight a drug charge.
About one-quarter of the cases — considered high priority because they involved someone still in prison, on parole, or awaiting trial, among other reasons — have been referred to prosecutors and defense attorneys....
The Massachusetts Bar Association criticized the administration’s management of the now-closed Hinton lab and warned the fallout from the scandal will last for years.
I hope I don't get a drug case for jury duty. Not guilty.
“The depth of the crisis is unfathomable and reveals what can only be described as an unconscionable level of gross negligence at the state drug lab,” said Martin W. Healy, chief legal counsel for the bar association.
“The crisis will continue to negatively impact the state’s budget and reverberate throughout the Commonwealth’s judicial system for years to come.”
Meier was hired by the Patrick administration last fall to identify individuals whose cases involved drug evidence that may have been affected in some way by Dookhan at the Jamaica Plain lab where she worked from 2003 to 2012.
How to correct any errors in prosecutions linked to Dookhan is an issue that district attorneys, mostly in Eastern Massachusetts, have been wrestling with since then, along with defense attorneys and the state’s court system.
Patrick said Tuesday that the list of potentially tainted cases would be provided to the criminal justice community.
“Now, with this detailed information, the many participants in the criminal justice system can do the work of getting each individual case right,” he said in a statement.
The names of the 40,323 people are now stored in a computer database, and Meier said his priority now is “to get the information into the hands of appropriate people, so that fundamental fairness and justice can be done.’’
He is planning to meet with prosecutors, police, the defense bar, and the judiciary to share the data.
In addition to unraveling hundreds of drug convictions, the scandal has cost the state millions of dollars for expenses accrued by individual prosecutors’ offices, several state agencies, and the judiciary as they searched for ways to ensure that no one was wrongly convicted.
Translated: they are not interested in truth, justice, or anything. They SPENT TAXPAYER DOLLARS to try and KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISON when it would have cost NEXT TO NOTHING to do a blanket release.
The state’s office of the inspector general is conducting its own investigation into the scandal, while Attorney General Martha Coakley is prosecuting Dookhan for tampering with evidence, allegations to which Dookhan has pleaded not guilty.
Related:
Former state chemist gets January trial date
Dookhan wants alleged admission tossed
For fiscal 2013, lawmakers set aside $30 million for Dookhan-related costs. The administration set up a procedure that required government agencies and counties to apply for funding to the state Department of Administration and Finance.
This while we are getting cuts in services despite the new taxes.
The administration said it has approved $10.4 million in requests, of which $7.6 million has been spent.
Administration officials said they now expect additional requests for state aid, given the additional names identified in the report.
Separately, the state has agreed to pay $12,500 a month to Meier’s Boston-based law firm, Todd & Weld, dating back to October, Meier said.
Who knows how many hundreds of millions this is going to cost the strapped taxpayers of Massachusetts.
--more--"
"Convict’s prison time slashed due to lab scandal; No longer seen as career offender" by Lynne Tuohy | Associated Press, August 28, 2013
CONCORD, N.H. — A Massachusetts crime lab scandal rippled Tuesday through a New Hampshire federal courtroom, where a convicted drug dealer who originally faced up to 20 years in prison caught a big break — a three-year sentence — after a Massachusetts drug conviction was tossed out two months ago.
Comilus Pope, 40, pleaded guilty a year ago to four counts of selling heroin and cocaine in Manchester. Because that was his third conviction for drug dealing, he faced the much higher sentence as a career offender. His previous convictions were in Lowell, Mass., and Nashua.
Pope’s 2007 Massachusetts conviction was thrown out in June because his case was among the up to 40,000 cases that authorities say were tainted by former drug lab chemist Annie Dookhan, who is facing multiple felony counts for allegedly falsifying and forging drug test results.
‘‘This defendant has benefited due to corruption by an official in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,’’ US District Judge Joseph Laplante said in sentencing Pope.
Sentencing guidelines called for a one-year sentence, but Assistant US Attorney Terry Ollila argued for three years, citing more than 30 arrests dating back to when Pope was 15.
‘‘At 15, he started on a life of crime and it hasn’t abated in any way,’’ Ollila said....
And that's probably true for all of them, so forget about reviewing the cases let's just leave them all in jail. That seems to be the authority's attitude about all this.
--more--"
