Pubdate: Sun, 30 Sep 2012
Source: Sentinel And Enterprise, The (MA)
Copyright: 2012 MediaNews Group, Inc. and Mid-States Newspapers, Inc.
Contact:  http://sentinelandenterprise.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2498

CHAOS IN THE COURTS FROM LAB SCANDAL

It's a scandal of breathtaking proportions. Annie Dookhan has told 
state police investigators that for two to three years she routinely 
faked drug test results, forged signatures on reports and cut corners 
while working as a chemist at the William A. Hinton State Laboratory 
Institute, a state crime lab in Boston.

She reportedly did it to impress her supervisors, handling up to 500 
samples per month while chemists normally handled 50 to 150 cases.

One colleague jokingly called her "Superwoman." And now the state has 
a super mess on its hands.

Authorities say 1,100 inmates are in prison based in part on the 
evidence Dookhan's testing provided to prosecutors, but investigators 
estimated tens of thousands of cases she handled will have to be 
reviewed. More than a dozen defendants have already been freed, and 
who knows how many more will be given a Get Out of Jail Free card.

As a result of the chaos this scandal is causing, Robert Mulligan, 
chief justice of the state trial court, is establishing special 
courts to handle the potential thousands of legal challenges 
convicted drug suspects are expected to wage, The Boston Globe reported Friday.

As often happens with scandals of this magnitude, the more we learn 
about the Dookhan case, the more evidence indicates that she should 
have been out of a job a lot sooner than March. Consider these 
details from the state police report on its investigation, as 
reported by The Associated Press on Friday:

* A supervisor noted as early as 2008 that Dookhan's caseload was 
unusually high. He spoke to Dookhan's superior, but no action was taken.

* In 2009, the supervisor noted to another supervisor that he had 
never seen Dookhan in front of a microscope.

* An audit was done of Dookhan's paperwork in 2010, but none of her 
samples was retested.

* A fellow chemist witnessed Dookhan testing a sample without 
balancing her scale -- a suggestion she was just going through the motions.

* There is evidence Dookhan lied on her resume.

As a result of this looseness in the lab, innocent suspects may be 
sitting in prison. It may also mean that an untold number of drug 
defendants who deserve to be in prison will be freed because evidence 
in their cases was tainted at the lab.

Attorney General Martha Coakley launched a criminal investigation and 
Dookhan was arrested Friday on obstruction of justice charges and a 
misdemeanor related to claims on her resume. State Public Health 
Commissioner John Auerbach resigned two weeks ago, one manager was 
fired and another resigned.

Gov. Deval Patrick on Friday said he hopes the people who are 
responsible will pay for their actions.

The taxpayers of Massachusetts will pay dearly, too. Patrick is 
asking authorities to estimate how much it will cost to investigate 
the scandal and to navigate the legal morass it's created. Expect the 
tab to run in the millions.

In return for its money, the people of Massachusetts must demand that 
procedures and security measures at the state's crime labs be so 
tight that they never again could fall victim to a rogue employee.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom