STORY: "Lab scandal makes way into federal court system," by reporter Walter Valencia, published in the Boston Globe on September 17, 2013.
PHOTO CAPTION: "The Annie Dookhan case has already been a nightmare at the state level."
GIST: "So far, relatively few petitions (roughly 90) have been filed in the federal court system, because federal investigators typically use their own crime lab when directly arresting defendants. But under the federal court system, prosecutors have the ability to cite a defendant’s history of crime in calculating what the sentence should be. And anyone with a total of three drug or violent crime convictions, at the state or federal level, could be classified as a “career criminal,” a designation that could significantly increase, in some cases triple, their federal sentence. Now, legal analysts say that, as defense lawyers successfully seek to have sentences vacated in state court, the legal response to the crime lab controversy is making its way into the federal court system as the lawyers challenge lengthy sentences that were based on a previous Dookhan-related state conviction. “The federal court will have to hear challenges for defendants who want to be resentenced, because if they hadn’t had that prior state conviction, the sentences would have been lower, in some cases significantly lower,” said Miriam Conrad, head of the federal public defender office in Boston. “State sentences can have a huge impact on a federal sentence imposed years later,” she added. The impact of the Dookhan case is not limited to Massachusetts."
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/09/16/dookhan-drug-lab-scandal-making-its-way-into-federal-court-system-massachusetts/KI9Th7AtA3w5u114pUwFHI/story.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.
Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com
