35 yr. old Annie Dookhan! frnaklin, MA
“A legislative panel is looking into possible reforms. Prosecutors say the obvious answer is better oversight.”
Ya think?
It is incredibly easy to "frame" somebody by doctoring a test result.
You mean no one noticed all that time.
End this stupid war on drugs now. It’s done far more harm than good. Everything Government touches outside of it’s specifically enumerated powers it f**** up. Everything.
These kinds of scandals have happened over and over. That’s why you never trust the ‘technical evidence’ over that of eyewitnesses to the alleged crime.
It is well known how important the handling of evidence is, for precisely the reason that if a person handling the evidence becomes suspect, then all evidence that person has handled becomes suspect. They had procedures, as every other city does, to ensure proper handling of evidence and test results. Yet she still was able to carry on, even after she started to raise red flags? This was a management failure.
The media here in MA has been pumping this story. Pumping it and pumping it. Like there’s nothing else to talk about. Crime lab scandal, day after day.
When I see stuff like this, I have to ask, “What is the media’s agenda?”
I say they want drug legalization. This little scandal is just a means to that end.
In MA, I would have gotten a felony. The perp who did this needs HARD TIME BEHIND BARS.
When I inquired, I was told that I had a controlled substance in my blood. It's a freaking beta blocker! I had showed the lab my prescription before hand.
Same lab had passed me six times before. Idiots.
This is why we should have the biblical “two or three witnesses” required for a conviction.
Just a drug lab test shouldn’t cut it.
The drug test; a witness; the testimony of someone who says he boasted of being a drug dealer. That’s three witnesses in my book, and if on a jury, I’d vote to convict.
Not on just a drug test.
The problem here is not the “war on drugs.” The problem is the wrongly prosecuted war on drugs. Do it right. Two or three witnesses.
So if you weigh the same as a duck?
When will the persecutions end?
I’m sure Martha Coakley will be only interested in real justice, just like in the Amirault cases.
“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.
Better that 10 guilty go free than one innocent be convicted. -- Abe Lincoln(R, IL)
/johnny
35 yr. old Annie Dookhan! frnaklin, MA
Mass State Police close State Drug Lab after finding State Chemist really screwed up drug evidence.
May involvehundreds 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 Department - Doctor 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 Safety – MaryBeth 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?
UPDATE: Mon 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 Auerbach ‘resigns‘ over the drug-lab scandal. Hey Deval, we want Heffernan and Bigby too!
Another consequence of the failed War on Drugs.