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Crime Lab Scandal Rocks Massachusetts
NPR ^ | September 20, 2012 | by Tovia Smith

Posted on 09/23/2012 6:17:28 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin

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To: JLS
The answer will never be to end the drug war. Too many Federal, state and local employees count on the income from a never ending war for their livelihoods. Whole federal, state and local bureaucracies exist, that employ hundreds of thousands of otherwise useless union drones for no other reason than to "fight the drug war."

Where would hundreds of small towns get the money for all the latest war toys if they couldn't steal all the possessions from 'druggies' and peddle them on the net?

Thanks to the RICO laws, passed to control drug smugglers, cops can rob passing RVer's and steal any cash, sell off the coaches, and justify a bottle of pain killers as a major drug bust.

To control drugs, the government keeps street prices artificially high so federal agents can steal more money, smugglers can afford higher bribes, congressmen, governors and senators can afford campaigns for president.

21 posted on 09/23/2012 7:13:52 PM PDT by jonascord (Democrats are the people on the Lefsst Side of the Bell Curve.r bust.)
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To: starvosan
That’s why you never trust the ‘technical evidence’ over that of eyewitnesses to the alleged crime.

Eyewitness testimony is itself horrifically unreliable.

22 posted on 09/23/2012 7:14:58 PM PDT by Strategerist
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To: Persevero
Do it right. Two or three witnesses.

Most of the time your "witnesses" will be people doing so to cop a plea and stay out of jail themselves.

23 posted on 09/23/2012 7:17:04 PM PDT by Strategerist
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To: Focault's Pendulum

That isn’t how the tests are performed. Periodically a test will generate a positive where it hasn’t in the past for a lot of different reasons. False positives are inherent to the system, just as false negatives are.

There should probably be a better system to dispute positive samples. I can see how that would make you bitter at the process.


24 posted on 09/23/2012 7:23:54 PM PDT by ican'tbelieveit (School is prison for children who have commited the crime of being born. (attr: St_Thomas_Aquinas))
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To: Strategerist

“Do it right. Two or three witnesses.

Most of the time your “witnesses” will be people doing so to cop a plea and stay out of jail themselves.”

Well, in that case what do you want? Ten? Twenty?

The Biblical standard is two-three. I can go with that.


25 posted on 09/23/2012 7:23:54 PM PDT by Persevero (Homeschooling for Excellence since 1992)
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To: ican'tbelieveit
That isn’t how the tests are performed. Periodically a test will generate a positive where it hasn’t in the past for a lot of different reasons. False positives are inherent to the system, just as false negatives are

I tested positive for a controlled narcotic. I take a beta blocker. How could you get a false positive from that?

26 posted on 09/23/2012 7:30:04 PM PDT by Focault's Pendulum (Obama A man without an American mission.)
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To: DeaconBenjamin

I’m sure Martha Coakley will be only interested in real justice, just like in the Amirault cases.


27 posted on 09/23/2012 7:30:23 PM PDT by SeaHawkFan
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To: Focault's Pendulum

The test procedures malfunction from time to time. I just had some data I generated a couple of years ago questioned. The submitter resubmitted material pulled at the same time and stored since then. One result was confirmed, another was not confirmed. So, when I tested two years ago, I showed twice that the results were the same, but now it doesn’t show up. Why? The vial the sample was stored in was contaminated? I don’t know. It happens.


28 posted on 09/23/2012 7:33:55 PM PDT by ican'tbelieveit (School is prison for children who have commited the crime of being born. (attr: St_Thomas_Aquinas))
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To: ican'tbelieveit

K


29 posted on 09/23/2012 7:40:32 PM PDT by Focault's Pendulum (Obama A man without an American mission.)
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To: fella

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evmSKSKnIas


30 posted on 09/23/2012 7:41:56 PM PDT by wally_bert (There are no winners in a game of losers. I'm Tommy Joyce, welcome to the Oriental Lounge.)
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To: jonascord

You have the public choice economics reason why the answer will never be accepted.


31 posted on 09/23/2012 7:56:25 PM PDT by JLS
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To: DeaconBenjamin

“a “rogue chemist” who may have mishandled evidence in as many as 40,000 cases over 10 years.”

She had to be the hardest working government employee in America.


32 posted on 09/23/2012 8:23:13 PM PDT by Sparky1776
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To: DeaconBenjamin
Dallas had the same problem with sheetrock being considered cocaine.

Better that 10 guilty go free than one innocent be convicted. -- Abe Lincoln(R, IL)

/johnny

33 posted on 09/23/2012 8:28:29 PM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: DeaconBenjamin

35 yr. old Annie Dookhan! frnaklin, MA


34 posted on 09/23/2012 8:44:24 PM PDT by kcvl
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To: Sparky1776

I wonder if she ran any of Lance Armstrong’s samples?


35 posted on 09/23/2012 8:44:44 PM PDT by alpo (What would Selco do?)
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Comment #36 Removed by Moderator

Comment #37 Removed by Moderator

To: DeaconBenjamin

Deval Patrick’s Drug-Lab Nightmare

Posted August 31st, 2012 by ironmike

Mass State Police close State Drug Lab after finding State Chemist really screwed up drug evidence.

May involve
hundreds of
up to 50,000 cases.

Drug dealers may be set free – state may have to compensate them.
Martha Coakley on the warpath – looking for easy scalps!

How come it took over a year?


In May 2008: Governor Deval Patrick renamed the state medical lab for one of America’s first Black doctors – Dr. William A. Hinton – son of a slave and later researcher and teacher at the Harvard Medical School. He invented a quick and inexpensive test for syphilis.

The lab was then a division of the State Public Health DepartmentDoctor JudyAnn Bigby and Commissioner John Auerbach.

By June 2011 – just three years later according to published reports – the sloppy work and corner cutting of state chemist Annie Dookhan came under suspicion.  She resigned.


Annie Dookhan

You never heard a peep about it!

Did it really take over a year for auditors to figure out how widespread and damaging her actions were?

Then the lab was transferred to Public SafetyMaryBeth Heffernan and Curtis M. Wood, and the State Police.  Curtis isn’t talking; ‘…case under investigation – can’t comment….

Bend over Taxpayers!

You’re about to pay for more Public Defenders to represent jailed drug dealers – first to spring them, – then to file lawsuits [maybe a BIG CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT] to compensate them for FALSE IMPRISONMENT. Drug convictions will have to be wiped clean off databases.

And here comes Martha Coakley – looking for some easy conviction scalps to hang on her belt before her run for Senator [or Governor] in 2014.  Damn, she’s gonna be a busy girl!

What exactly did Chemist Dookhan do wrong?  It may have been mere career ambition – wanting to ‘look like the best in the lab‘ – which made her cut corners, breeze past record-keeping and paperwork, – and worst of all – possibly testify untruthfully under oath in criminal cases. That last part may cost her time in jail herself.  

The FIRST and OVERRIDING DUTY of any government is to protect the People – from foreign and domestic enemies.  Criminals are domestic enemies.  Patrick’s AA/EEO appointees have FAILED in their primary duty.



Deval Patrick
has some serious housecleaning to do. I doubt he has the political courage to do it.



His Departments of Public Safety [Heffernan & company] and his Public Health Departments [Bigby, Monahan, Auerbach, et al, et aux] are a sad combination of AA/EEO hires and democratic political hacks.

Duh-val – do you have the balls to clean house?



What about State Police Colonel McGovern – who JUST ‘retired‘ – then filed for ‘disability‘? 

How long did SHE cover up this boondoggle? If people were convicted and imprisoned on sloppy evidence and perjured testimony – why was she silent so long?  Who’s asses was she covering? 

Is this why she’s going to get a $13+K/month tax-free disability retirement?

And YOU Governor – what did YOU know, – and WHEN did you learn about it?  Funny how sh*t left in the dark becomes something you later step in,…isn’t it?

/s/  Iron Mike
Old Soldier, – Still Good for Parts!

UPDATE:  Wed 5 Sept 2012 – with Duh-val making speeches at the DNC in Charlotte, the Herald reports Dookhan man have handled up to 50,000 cases…  Ya’ think the crime lab was understaffed?

UPDATEMon 10 Sept 2012 (AP) – Gov. Deval Patrick said Monday there would be criminal and civil consequences for what he called an apparent “breakdown in oversight” at a now-closed state police crime lab. OK Duh-val – show us how tough you are….

UPDATE: Mon 17 Sept 2012  Public Health Commishioner John Auerbachresigns‘ over the drug-lab scandal. Hey Deval, we want Heffernan and Bigby too!


38 posted on 09/23/2012 9:20:01 PM PDT by Bratch
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To: JRandomFreeper
I think that quote is better attributed to William Blackstone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentaries_on_the_Laws_of_England

39 posted on 09/23/2012 9:20:31 PM PDT by Wayne07
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To: Tzar
I'm not joking. I am a crack addict.

Recovered, and deep in the 12 step fellowship, but I will always be an addict.

40 posted on 09/23/2012 9:22:37 PM PDT by Lazamataz (Gingers have no souls.)
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