Posted on 09/28/2012 11:12:10 AM PDT by raccoonradio
Annie Dookhan, the former state chemist at the center of a lab scandal which could overturn hundreds of drug convictions, was arrested by state police this morning.
Dookhan, 34, was brought out of her Franklin home in handcuffs and put into an unmarked cruiser shortly before noon. She did not speak and kept her head down as she was led down her walkway in front of reporters.
Dookhan is charged with two counts of obstruction of justice and falsely pretending to hold a degree from a college or university. She will be arraigned at Boston Municipal Court this afternoon.
Dookhan, a former chemist at the Hinton State Laboratory Institute, “is alleged to have lied about the integrity of drug evidence that she analyzed at the lab in two instances,” according to a statement from Attorney General Martha Coakley. She is also alleged to have lied under oath about having a master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts, according to the statement.
Troopers assigned to Coakley’s office are investigating.
Dookhan, who admitted to police she “messed up bad” and confessed to forging colleagues’ signatures, sneaking evidence out of a drug safe and tainting samples for years, has thrown cases against 34,000 defendants into jeopardy and created chaos in the state and federal courts in recent weeks.
The growing scandal forced Gov. Deval Patrick to close the Hinton State Laboratory Institute, the Jamaica Plain facility where Dookhan worked, last month. Patrick has appointed former prosecutor David Meier to review cases in which Dookhan tested drugs. Meier has said 1,140 people are currently behind bars based on evidence handled by Dookhan.
Dookhan had been “intentionally turning a negative sample into a positive a few times” and in some cases, classifying drugs without testing them for at least several years, according to her interview with state police last month.
Dookhan, who also falsely testified during a drug case that she had a master’s degree, resigned in March amid an internal probe by the state Department of Public Health as the agency was set to turn over control of the lab to state police.
Dookhan has been unavailable for comment since the scandal broke last month.
A man who answered the door after Dookhan was driven away by troopers declined to comment.
Coakley will address the arrest this afternoon.
All that she did and this is what they charge her with?
If only she simply didn’t know what she was doing. She admitted to intentionally falsifying test results. I would think they could have hit her with about 200 charges not 3.
Doesn’t surprise me. Meet my old boss...
“A 65-year-old chemist and his army of Baby Boomers have been busted for running a Quaaludes ring out a posh Fifth Ave. apartment.
Dennis Patrick Fairley cooked up more than 100,000 of the sedative - which peaked in popularity in the 1960s and ‘70s - in his California lab, officials said.”
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-04-07/news/27061070_1_california-lab-flood-brooklyn
Happy to say I got out when the going got weird.
“I would think they could have hit her with about 200 charges not 3.”
They will later. This was just to get her in and into the system. This is a huge black eye for Lil’ Barry’s administration. They needed to do something quickly, hence the arrest and the perp walk.
There are some very, very bad people who are going to be walking because of this dimwit.
You're right. She did. There is a malicious mind there behind that face.
I wonder if she got her job through “affirmative action”?
<>How long was she there? It just says years.
Good grief.<>
9 years. 34,000 defendants
http://news.yahoo.com/mass-chemist-drug-test-flap-arrested-160136833.html
“State police say Dookhan tested more than 60,000 drug samples involving 34,000 defendants during her nine years at the lab. Defense lawyers and prosecutors are scrambling to figure out how to deal with the fallout.”
I bet she’s a prohibitionist.
I object! Defendant is guilty! Why that face could stop a clock!
Thanks for the info.
Aint no big thing
To wait for the bell to ring
Aint no big thing
To wait for the bell to ring
Aint no big thing
The toll of the bell
Aggravated - spare for days
I troll downtown the red light place
Jump up bubble up - what's in store
Love is the drug and I need to score
Showing out, showing out, hit and run
Boy meets girl as beat goes on
Stitched up tight, can't break free
Love is the drug, got a hook on me
Oh oh catch that buzz
Love is the drug Im thinking of
Oh oh can't you see
Love is the drug for me
Late that night I park my car
Stake my place in the singles bar
Face to face, toe to toe
Heart to heart as we hit the floor
Lumber up, limbo down
The locked embrace, the stumble round
I say go, she say yes
Dim the lights, you can guess the rest
Oh oh catch that buzz
Love is the drug Im thinking of
Oh oh can't you see
Love is the drug, got a hook in me
Oh oh catch that buzz
Love is the drug Im thinking of
Oh oh can't you see
Love is the drug for me
More than likely through "extra-occupational action".
UPDATE from the Boston Herald
Dookhan, 34, pleaded not guilty this afternoon in Boston Municipal Court to two counts of obstruction of justice and falsely pretending to hold a degree from a college or university. She is expected to post $10,000 bail, her attorney said.
Prosecutors said today Dookhan would sprinkle cocaine on negative test results, test them again, and report the positive finding; and test one sample out of a batch of 25 and list them all as positive.
Coakley added Dookhan could face more charges as the investigation continues. Each obstruction charge carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.
“This is not the end of the charging,” Coakley vowed.
State police arrested Dookhan this morning at her home in Franklin, leading her out of her modest split-level after handcuffing her inside shortly before noon. She did not speak and kept her head down as she was led down her walkway in front of reporters to one unmarked police car, then again to a cruiser which sped away up the suburban street not far from Interstate 495 with the rogue chemist inside.
Dookhan wore jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. A man at Dookhan’s home told the press after, “Please, get off my property.”
Dookhan must wear a GPS monitor while out on bail and surrender her passport, a judge ordered. She must also stay away from a former employee.
Coakley said she was determined to find Dookhan’s motive to prevent future lab breaches and acknowledged Dookhan’s ego and the need to feel proud that she was an efficient worker may have played a role in her actions.
-——falsely pretending-——
I believe that one who falsely pretends is acting truthfully.
That assessment follows the disclosure of a statement, signed by Dookhan in front of the police detectives, that she intentionally turned negative drug tests into positive drug tests and often got her results by eyeballing rather than testing.
Just as stunning are the interviews with former associates and supervisors that indicate Dookhan was suspected of or seen engaged in improprieties over a number of years, but was never reported until June 2011 or fully investigated until now.
The consistent line by Gov. Deval Patrick, Secretary of Health and Human Services JudyAnn Bigby and John Auerbach, the now-resigned commissioner of state’s Department of Public Health, has been that Dookhan was a “rogue chemist.”
But the picture emerging is that of a rogue laboratory that operated without checking and retesting, enforced protocols or measures taken to test those doing the testing.
The state police report obtained by WBUR details witness statements that say assistant district attorneys would call Dookhan directly to look up data, a circumvention of protocols that dictated prosecutors and police should go through the evidence office of the drug lab.
Suffolk County prosecutors are said to have asked for Dookhan by name. One associate says Dookhan would get calls on her cellphone from assistant district attorneys — no other chemist got such calls.
Dookhan always requested drug samples from Norfolk County, according to a chemist who once called Dookhan “the superwoman of the lab.” Dookhan’s coworker told police that Dookhan asked for specific drug samples by evidence control number, another distinct breach of protocol.
“I think the entire laboratory’s communications with prosecutors and police should be turned over,” attorney Ryan said. “If there is any DA’s office that has email exchanges with anyone at that lab – and particularly Annie Dookhan — those need to be turned over.
“Let’s see who the assistant DAs were. I think any assistant district attorney who asked for her personally needs to be interviewed to determine what the relationship was,” Ryan continued. “Why were they asking for Annie Dookhan specifically? And what did they want? We need to get to the bottom of what was going on.”
The state police detectives who conducted the interviews in August are affiliated with the office of Attorney General Martha Coakley, who is conducting the criminal investigation. But some defense attorneys argue the most recent revelations bolster the need for Coakley to appoint a special prosecutor in the interest of transparency and appearance. Which makes the story of Annie Dookhan and the state drug lab a story that’s getting bigger, not smaller.
http://www.wbur.org/2012/09/27/annie-dookhan-statement
LoL!
you caught that too ‘eh?
Yeah, the charge doesn’t even sound real (”falsely pretending”...). Oxymorons abound!
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