Annie Dookhan: Massachusetts; Bulletin: The clock ticks away; Prosecutors under pressure to meet deadline imposed by state's highest court:..Reporter Laura J. Sweet; Boston Herald; January 24, 2017..."Justice Margot Botsford says it will take an “enormously cataclysmic act of God” to persuade her Supreme Judicial Court colleagues to budge on deadlines they’ve set to clean up the fallout from former state chemist Annie Dookhan’s crimes. “We really need to put this whole episode behind us,” Botsford said yesterday during a meeting with assistant district attorneys and defense lawyers for thousands of accused drug offenders at the John Adams Courthouse. “I’m really entreating you all to work cooperatively with each other,” she said. “This is history, and it’s bad history. It’s a staining history. We need do something about that.”

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “This is history, and it’s bad history. It’s a staining history. We need do something about that.”

Justice Margot Botsford;

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 "Justice Margot Botsford says it will take an “enormously cataclysmic act of God” to persuade her Supreme Judicial Court colleagues to budge on deadlines they’ve set to clean up the fallout from former state chemist Annie Dookhan’s crimes. “We really need to put this whole episode behind us,” Botsford said yesterday during a meeting with assistant district attorneys and defense lawyers for thousands of accused drug offenders at the John Adams Courthouse. “I’m really entreating you all to work cooperatively with each other,” she said. “This is history, and it’s bad history. It’s a staining history. We need do something about that.” The court ruled last week it was giving prosecutors until April 18 — a firm 90 days — to figure out how many criminal cases potentially jeopardized by Dookhan’s tainted drug evidence they are willing to broom, and how many they believe they can still win if retried. Also, how many guilty pleas they would argue should stand. Dookhan, 39, worked at the now-shuttered Department of Public Health’s Hinton Laboratory in Jamaica Plain. She pleaded guilty in 2012 to more than two dozen counts of tampering. She was paroled in April, as first reported by the Herald."

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2017/01/sjc_clock_is_ticking_for_decisions_on_annie_dookhan_cases