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Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil
- michaelfeathers 13y agoI'm curious what percentage of testing goes through that lab.
- wcummings 13y agoShe did a lot more tests than her coworkers, and it was a big lab. She also had close ties to prosecutors, which has unsettling implications.
- jonlucc 13y agoThis is a good question. I think most cities have one lab. They probably have multiple analysts in the lab, but I think it's still a pretty high percentage of the total cases.
- sigstoat 13y agosadly, no, most cities don't have their own tox/drug chemistry lab. there are entire states with just 1 lab. i'm not familiar with massachusetts, but i wouldn't be surprised if most of the relevant testing for the state was going through there.
- michaelfeathers 13y agoAnother travesty of monoculture.
- vsviridov 13y ago34000 tainted cases is not "messed up big time". It's deliberate and malicious. And she gets 3-5 years? Bullshit.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- matthewmacleod 13y agoWhat's the justification for that? What qualifies you to pass such a sentence, and what makes the sentence the justice system settled on inappropriate?
- njharman 13y agoThe extreme magnitude of the impact of her crime. Injuring 34,000 victims. "Breaking" the justice system. Abuse of the extraordinary power society placed in her.
- dreamdu5t 13y agoHow about serving the sentences she was responsible for? Even if she served 1 day for every sentence that was a result of her intentional tampering of the evidence, she would be serving life.
- stdbrouw 13y agoJustice is about more than retribution.
- Crito 13y agoThere is more to consider than merely justice. We also have to protect society from her. How could she ever possibly be trusted again to anything? Hell, I wouldn't even trust her to bag my groceries. She lied about her background once, and harmed thousands of people. Who is to say that in 20 years she won't be found under another name, in another state, running this or another scam again? If our system was set up to rehabilitate, that would be great, but it isn't. As long as she remains un-rehabilitated, she should be kept locked up. Not out of some sense of justice or for retribution, but simply to keep her from harming others again.
- 13y ago
- yeukhon 13y agowhat is her motive?
- wcummings 13y ago"Putting drug dealers in jail", to only very loosely paraphrase her words. She was working with the prosecutors. The news loves to call her a "rogue chemist" to misdirect. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2012/12/20/indicted-drug-analyst-annie-dookhan-mails-reveal-her-close-personal-ties-prosecutors/A37GaatHLKfW1kphDjxLXJ/story.html http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2012/12/20/in...
- middleclick 13y agoReminds me of this: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/11/kids-for-cash-judge-pennsylvania http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/11/kids-for-cash-j... "'Kids for cash' judge gets 28 years in Pennsylvania bribery case"
- malandrew 13y agoYup, standard throw her under the bus tactic as misdirection.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- honzzz 13y agoI can only speculate about her motives. But the system that is set in such a way that prisons can be privately owned and prisoners exploited for personal gain is a recipe for disaster. Stakeholders making profit from prisoners have a strong incentive to somehow ensure that as many people as possible get sent to prison for as long as possible no matter whether they are guilty or not. Some might decide to achieve this by bribing someone in the chain of obtaining/evaluating evidence. In a penal system like this it's just a matter of time before something like this happens. BTW, it might also be a nice way to explain why punishments tend to be so much harsher than for example in Europe - in the US can being 'tough on crime' be profitable.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- danso 13y agoThe OP is a bit outdated...Dookhan has since been sentenced to 3 to 5 years in prison: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/11/22/annie-dookhan-former-state-chemist-who-mishandled-drug-evidence-agrees-plead-guilty/7UU3hfZUof4DFJGoNUfXGO/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/11/22/annie-dookhan-fo... The system is indeed in turmoil as it has to continue to review a massive number of cases. One of the worser case scenarios has since happened: a man who was freed because of possibly tainted evidence went on to allegedly murder someone http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/05/17/man-freed-because-annie-dookhan-case-charged-brockton-murder/8bWlbdDMmRef2l6yW2KVEL/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/05/17/man-freed-becaus...
- alexeisadeski3 13y agoI'd say that imprisoning innocent people was already the worst case scenario.
- theg2 13y agoAll sorts of "fun" stuff going on here: Another chemist found with no credentials - http://badchemistry.wbur.org/2013/11/26/mass-chemist-academic-credentials http://badchemistry.wbur.org/2013/11/26/mass-chemist-academi... How fast did Dookhan work contrasted to case load: http://badchemistry.wbur.org/2013/05/15/annie-dookhan-drug-testing-productivity http://badchemistry.wbur.org/2013/05/15/annie-dookhan-drug-t...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- judk 13y agohttp://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2012/12/20/indicted-drug-analyst-annie-dookhan-mails-reveal-her-close-personal-ties-prosecutors/A37GaatHLKfW1kphDjxLXJ/story.html http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2012/12/20/in... The DA is already covering up and defending the prosecutor's involvement, saying there is nothing wrong with prosecutors telling Dhookan what test results they needed to get their convictions, in clear violation of proper experimental procedures.
- Crito 13y agoForensic science in general is an absolute joke. It makes a mockery of the very concept of science. There are a few isolated pockets where the techniques and procedures used are sound, but for the most part the scientific method and rigor are nowhere to be seen.
- Zmetta 13y agoCare to cite anything about this? From a Biochemist's perspective, when done properly, chemical analysis is extremely accurate and provides a great deal of information.
- Crito 13y agoForensic science encompasses a broad range of things, including bullet-lead analysis, arson investigation, handwriting analysis, fingerprinting, etc. Various techniques have bordered or even crossed into pseudoscience, others have wildly erratic error bars that are never properly considered. There are so many problems because the entire field does not treat their discipline as scientists do, they are too close to law enforcement for that. Techniques are used for decades before anybody bothers to properly figure out if the technique actually works.
- malandrew 13y agoThere should be a chinese wall between the crime lab and the DA. All the DA should be able to do is submit evidence and any matching of that evidence to the accused should be a complete black box as far as the DA is concerned.
- gms 13y agoI assume nothing will happen to the prosecutors she worked with.
- analog31 13y agoAre they elected?
- bmelton 13y agoOnly the actual district attorney is elected, and the DA is seldom responsible for the actual trying of cases. The DA is usually pretty far removed from the minutia of actual casework.
- malandrew 13y agoSocial network analysis using known tampered cases should be enough to highlight all the DAs that could require further scrutiny. I would not be surprised if SNA shows that a few DAs in particular show up over and over and over again in these tampered cases. AFAIK, the DAs are the civil servants with the most to gain and lose from conviction rates and therefore are the most likely to have been involved, assuming others collaborated or were at least complicit.
- dyscrete 13y agoCould she have been manipulated by prosecutors? Yes she should be held accountable for her actions, but I have a hunch that prosecutors had something more to do with this.
- tokenadult 13y agoMinnesota Public Radio reported often about systemic problems in the St. Paul, Minnesota crime lab over the last few years. http://blogs.mprnews.org/cities/2013/08/st-paul-police-crime-lab-back-up-and-running-after-scandal/ http://blogs.mprnews.org/cities/2013/08/st-paul-police-crime... It seems those problems are now mostly cleaned up, and there is no particular implication here that a similar problem exists in the state crime lab, but it is a very good idea for citizens to press law enforcement administrators to make sure that crime lab procedures are validated and standardized and checked and rechecked. When I started reading the skeptical literature a decade or so ago, I was astonished to discover that even fingerprint identification is not a well standardized or well validated procedure. And I used to believe that defense attorneys (I am a lawyer by training, although I don't practice law) were mostly willfully ignorant of science when they cast doubt on DNA evidence. But now I heartily approve the side-effect of our adversary system of justice, which when it works best should have the "other side" questioning every form of evidence and putting it to the test of rigorous validation. I think too often people trying to solve the problem of crime through the criminal justice system look for quick answers rather than exact answers. AFTER EDIT: This background article link http://badchemistry.wbur.org/2013/05/19/annie-dookhan-and-the-massachusetts-drug-lab-crisis http://badchemistry.wbur.org/2013/05/19/annie-dookhan-and-th... from the NPR affiliate in Boston updates the story and is more current than the NPR link kindly submitted here (which is from March 2013 rather than May 2013).
- Zigurd 13y ago> It seems those problems are now mostly cleaned up, and there is no particular implication here that a similar problem exists in the state crime lab Except that the incentives are still massively perverse. It doesn't take an organizational dynamics genius to know it's a safe bet these are not the only two state crime labs with this problem.
- HNLogInsSuckAss 13y agoReminds me of another case in Chicago or Cook County a few years ago where another bitch did the same thing.
- Yeah_Sure 13y agoStory looked familiar. This is back in March.
- chimeracoder 13y ago> "It's unsettling and maddening, because you're now going to have a lot of people get released to the street prematurely," says Middlesex County District attorney Gerry Leone, one of many hoping the state supreme court will curb the releases. That's a pretty bad way of looking at this, because it assumes that those people deserved to be behind bars to begin with, and ignores those that didn't. How about, "It's unsettling and maddening, because we now realize we have a lot of people behind bars without the [proper] due process they deserved"?
- girvo 13y agoThat is not how the police work nor think about cases, though. One of the many reasons I dislike them.
- drjesusphd 13y agoHe's not a cop though, he's a district attorney.
- girvo 13y agoPotato, potahto. Actually, DA's are even worse as far as I'm concerned. Funny to think I actually studied Law.
- ensignavenger 13y agoAll suspects a guilty, period. Or else they wouldn't be suspects, now would they?
- Taniwha 13y agono, all suspects are innocent until proven guilty - the problem here is that the proving has been done in error so they are still innocent until proven guilty
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- tjaerv 13y agoPreviously: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Laboratory#Controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI_Laboratory#Controversy
- malandrew 13y agoI would love to see every single email by DAs that include her name subpoenaed. "The report shows that the Hinton lab leaned heavily on Dookhan’s productivity. Supervisors lauded her work ethic and assigned her an increasing share of tests."[0] We should know what her supervisors and DA were saying in private about her work to her and to one another. There is no way that someone is so much more productive, without anyone ever suspecting wrongdoing and turning a blind eye to all this. Anyone who had ever expressed suspicion of her work, but never raised the issue should be liable for criminal negligence here. [0] http://badchemistry.wbur.org/2013/05/15/annie-dookhan-drug-testing-productivity http://badchemistry.wbur.org/2013/05/15/annie-dookhan-drug-t...
- DannyBee 13y agoOutside of political fallout, nothing will happen to the prosecutors. Nobody will charge them criminally, and civilly, prosecutors have absolute immunity in most cases, sadly. (There are limits to when they are given absolute immunity, generally limited to to advocative functions, but they are often hard to separate out)
- malandrew 13y agoIn one of the threads about this scandal someone said that it would be valuable to send known negative samples to a lab and check which ones come back positive, so that we can investigate whether misconduct was involved. This is basically equivalent to unit testing, since they are known assert(false) tests. Unit tests can be devised to test crime labs, district attorneys, law enforcement officers, judges, etc. This makes me think if maybe this wouldn't be a worthwhile test for the justice system in general. Hire actors to pose as criminals in the system where the person is not guilty, but where most evidence supports a guilty verdict with a few smaller pieces of evidence that prove innocent. With this we find out how many prosecutors take the case all the way to conviction by willingly choosing to ignore evidence suggesting guilt and which decide to drop the case because they believe the person to be innocent. This would be the equivalent of acceptance testing the justice system.
- Oculus 13y agoThe problem is no one, especially not the Justice or Police System, want to show all the flaws that they have when it's so easy to cover for themselves currently.
- Elrac 13y agoI like your idea! In an evidence based society, it might be picked up and spread like wildfire. Of us (by majority, here) programming nerds, who wouldn't want to write better programs? Which consumer doesn't want better product safety? Which government could fail to want more truth-based justice? But the USA is far from an evidence based society. It's a society where, in the interest of perpetuating religions, intellect is trumped by superstition and evidence by authority. As a side effect, justice is predicated on vengeance rather than reform.
- w_t_payne 13y agoI am shocked and horrified that a loyal servant of the system should be discarded so casually. After all, falsifying convictions is just a part of how the system works, isn't it? You have to keep the lower orders scared to keep them loyal - otherwise they might start getting ideas above their station, mightn't they? It's like holding a wolf by the ears: release it, and we would all be in trouble.
- chris_wot 13y agoAccording to Dookhan's lawyer, she says that she did it because she wanted to get a 8 hour pay-check, that there was "too much red tape" but very loose protocol. But - she's not a rogue chemist! Oh no. When chemists do lab tests, are they blind to the criminal circumstances themselves? http://www.wbur.org/2013/11/29/dookhan-lawyer http://www.wbur.org/2013/11/29/dookhan-lawyer What I find really awful, is that in many cases, jobs were lost, families destroyed, and sentences were stiffer because of false results by this chemist.
- laveur 13y agoBeing a Mass. Resident this is really really really really old news! How the hell is this just not getting here?