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