Bulletin: Annie Dookhan: Massachusetts; Wayne Ruffin. Sean Ellis; Northeastern University Law School Professor Daniel Medwed's perspective on Annie Dookhan who was convicted of faking test results and tampering with evidence in criminal drug cases. His WGHB News commentary is called: "Beyond Annie Dookhan And Sean Ellis: Corruption And Criminal Justice."..."While the Ruffin and Ellis cases are very different, a common thread binds them: Should convicted defendants whose cases were tainted, even if indirectly, by the blatant misconduct of government actors receive new trials? I believe the answer is yes. Even if Ruffin pled guilty before the drug certificates were issued, even if some of the evidence about the BPD detectives’ corruption was known to the defense at previous stages of the Ellis case, a cloud of corruption hangs over both matters. The best way to clear the skies is to allow for new trials. The Ruffin and Ellis cases do not just disclose the frailties of humans; they show the collateral damage wrought by intentional misconduct in our criminal justice system. It is up to the courts to let the sun shine through and permit new trials, regardless of their eventual outcomes."

  

"Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter once wrote that “all systems of law . . . are administered through men and therefore may occasionally disclose the frailties of men.” Those frailties surface in the administration of the criminal justice system.  Police detectives afflicted with tunnel vision arrest the wrong people; prosecutors pursue criminal charges against innocent suspects based on mistaken eyewitness identifications; judges make poor judgment calls and admit unreliable evidence; and defense lawyers fail to advocate for their clients with the requisite zeal.   These errors are usually good-faith mistakes—gaffes attributable to some combination of excessive workloads, incompetence, inadequate training, limited resources, and cognitive biases.  Good people make bad decisions.  When that happens, we can focus on concrete reforms to allow those actors to maximize their performance. 

But sometimes the errors don’t derive from good faith. Two examples of outright corruption in the criminal justice system appear in cases on this week’s appellate docket for the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, the highest court in the Commonwealth.  On Tuesday, the SJC will hear arguments in Commonwealth v. Ruffin, which is yet another chapter in the volume of litigation related to Annie Dookhan’s misdeeds.........Later this week, on Thursday, the SJC will take up the high-profile case of Commonwealth v. Ellis. Read on - at the link below - for Medwin's discussion of the two cases.........While the Ruffin and Ellis cases are very different, a common thread binds them: Should convicted defendants whose cases were tainted, even if indirectly, by the blatant misconduct of government actors receive new trials? I believe the answer is yes.  Even if Ruffin pled guilty before the drug certificates were issued, even if some of the evidence about the BPD detectives’ corruption was known to the defense at previous stages of the Ellis case, a cloud of corruption hangs over both matters.  The best way to clear the skies is to allow for new trials.  The Ruffin and Ellis cases do not just disclose the frailties of humans; they show the collateral damage wrought by intentional misconduct in our criminal justice system.  It is up to the courts to let the sun shine through and permit new trials, regardless of their eventual outcomes."
http://news.wgbh.org/2016/05/02/local-news/beyond-annie-dookhan-and-sean-ellis-corruption-and-criminal-justice