Jessica S. Henry is an Associate Professor in the Department of Justice Studies at Montclair State University. After serving as a public defender for nearly a decade, Professor Henry joined the Justice Studies faculty in 2005. Professor Henry teaches a wide range of courses, including Death Penalty Perspectives, Wrongful Convictions and Hate Crimes. Professor Henry appears as a frequent commentator on national television, radio, and in print media. Her areas of research include severe sentences (including the death penalty and life without parole), prisoner reentry and hate crimes.)
"Plenty of people who commit non-violent drug crimes are sentenced to years, if not decades, in prison. Policymakers have argued that severe sentences are necessary to deter offenders from committing future crimes. But Annie Dookhan was recently paroled after serving just two years of a 3-5 year sentence. Her crime? Routinely and brazenly fabricating evidence that potentially tainted 40,000 convictions in Massachusetts.........In the years between 2003-2012, Dookhan was involved in tens of thousands of cases. In some cases, she did not perform drug tests but fabricated results. In others, she tampered with drug samples so they would test positive for illegal drugs when there were no illegal substances at all. And sometimes she would change the weight of tested drugs so that they would trigger more serious penalties. After several miscarriages of justice were revealed, Dookhan was arrested and, in 2013, pled guilty to a variety of charges, including tampering with evidence and filing false reports. At Dookhan’s sentencing, Judge Carol S. Ball summed up the impact of Dookhan’s lies: Innocent persons were incarcerated, guilty persons have been released to further endanger the public, millions and millions of public dollars are being expended to deal with the chaos Ms. Dookhan created, and the integrity of the criminal justice system has been shaken to the core. But Dookhan is out now, while many of the so-called “Dookhan defendants” continue to serve the sentences on their potentially tainted convictions. And although some Dookhan defendants were guilty of their offenses, others were innocent, convicted of crimes that did not occur. There are lawsuits pending, and ongoing investigations into the thousands of cases impacted by her falsities. But what strikes me most is that Dookhan - who engaged in serious and pervasive misconduct with wide and far-reaching costs - received and served a prison sentence far less severe than many of her victims. Some defendants suffered additional costs far more difficult to quantify: lost livelihoods, broken relationships from time in prison, children removed from their custody, and the trauma from incarceration. And then there are the millions of taxpayer dollars that will ultimately be spent trying to clean up Dookhan’s mess. Wrongful convictions caused by scientific misconduct have a special taint. We rely on forensic scientists to tell us about the evidence because we don’t have the expertise to do their job. When scientists lie, and we believe them, everyone loses. Lab science fraud harms the innocent, it harms society because the convictions of guilty people are called into question, and it harms the public trust and the taxpayer coffers. I am not a supporter of severe sentences for non-violent crimes. But if we are genuinely committed to preventing and deterring lab fraud, as I think we should be, then we need to think carefully about the message that is sent when we sentence perpetrators of lab fraud to less time than their victims."
The entire commentary can be found at:
See the fascinating connection between Annie Dookhan and the late Antonin Scalia at the link below. (No 'spoilers' from me. HL);
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-04-21/antonin-scalia-s-rightful-revolution
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
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;
Harold Levy;
Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
