PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Authorities found numerous issues within the lab, including chronic managerial negligence, inadequate training and a lack of professional standards. Two former chemists were convicted of tampering with evidence. Rollins said the state was in the process of determining the total number of convictions tied to Hinton, she noted that more than 190,000 cases were processed through the facility between 2003 and 2012, and that approximately 74,848 test analyses that could be subject to relief through the initiative."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Even before Monday’s revelations, fallout from the decades-long drug lab scandal had been unprecedented, resulting in the dismissal of more than 35,000 drug convictions, as well as the prosecution of two former state chemists, Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak. Their misconduct has cost the state more than $30 million to date, according to court records, with state payouts to those wrongfully convicted expected to reach $10 million. Those wrongfully convicted of drug crimes have received penalties including prison or jail time, loss of parental rights and, in an untold number of cases, deportation. Today, taxpayers continue to shoulder millions to clean up the scandal, including repaying defendants for court, probation, and other fees stemming from their prosecutions. Three state prosecutors are also facing the loss of their law license for withholding evidence in a pending case with the Board of Bar Overseers. Monday’s filing also makes clear that misconduct within state labs extended beyond disgraced chemists Dookhan, who worked at Hinton, and Farak, who in 2014 pleaded guilty to stealing drug samples at the state lab in Amherst to feed her addiction."
STORY: "Rollins to drop charges, convictions in tens of thousands of cases tried by troubled state lab," by reporters Dugan Arnett and Maggie Mulvihill," published by The Boston Globe on March 22, 2021.
PHOTO CAPTION: The Hinton State Laboratory Institute in Jamaica Plains was shuttered in 2012."
GIST: "Citing misconduct and a “catastrophic failure of management,” Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins on Monday announced a plan to drop charges in tens of thousands of criminal cases that had evidence processed at a scandal-plagued state drug lab, widening the scope of what was already the largest drug lab scandal in the country’s history.
In a court filing Monday afternoon, Rollins announced the Hinton Lab Initiative, vowing to work with attorneys to resolve drug convictions tied to examinations at the state-run William A. Hinton lab between May 2003 and its closing in August 2012.
“No defendant harmed in this ignominious chapter of Massachusetts law enforcement history should continue to bear the burden and be marked with the brand of the Commonwealth’s extensive wrong doing,” Rollins’ office wrote in the filing.
Authorities found numerous issues within the lab, including chronic managerial negligence, inadequate training and a lack of professional standards. Two former chemists were convicted of tampering with evidence.
Rollins said the state was in the process of determining the total number of convictions tied to Hinton, she noted that more than 190,000 cases were processed through the facility between 2003 and 2012, and that approximately 74,848 test analyses that could be subject to relief through the initiative.
Rollins’ announcement involves only Suffolk County cases, and her announcement will likely impact cases prosecuted in other counties.
Even before Monday’s revelations, fallout from the decades-long drug lab scandal had been unprecedented, resulting in the dismissal of more than 35,000 drug convictions, as well as the prosecution of two former state chemists, Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak. Their misconduct has cost the state more than $30 million to date, according to court records, with state payouts to those wrongfully convicted expected to reach $10 million.
Those wrongfully convicted of drug crimes have received penalties including prison or jail time, loss of parental rights and, in an untold number of cases, deportation.
Today, taxpayers continue to shoulder millions to clean up the scandal, including repaying defendants for court, probation, and other fees stemming from their prosecutions. Three state prosecutors are also facing the loss of their law license for withholding evidence in a pending case with the Board of Bar Overseers.
Monday’s filing also makes clear that misconduct within state labs extended beyond disgraced chemists Dookhan, who worked at Hinton, and Farak, who in 2014 pleaded guilty to stealing drug samples at the state lab in Amherst to feed her addiction.
Originally run primarily by the state Department of Public Health, the State Police took over drug testing in July 2012. Within a month, however, former Gov. Deval Patrick ordered the facility closed after he was informed Dookhan had been caught in 2011 breaking chain-of-custody protocols. Patrick enlisted state Inspector General Glenn A. Cunha to investigate the lab operations between 2002 and 2012.
The inspector general was tasked with conducting a “top-to-bottom” review of the lab to determine “whether any chemists, supervisors or managers at the Drug Lab committed any misfeasance or malfeasance that may have impacted the reliability of drug testing at the Drug Lab.”
The 15-month investigation — which included interviews with 40 individuals and the review of more than 200,000 lab records, test results, emails and other documents — found serious management deficiencies at the facility, a lack of protocols and standards for drug testing, and no training to keep employees up-to-date on industry practices.
Despite the urging of a consultant with the investigation that several chemists should be probed, Cunha’s office ultimately determined that Dookhan — who admitted to investigators that she’d failed to fully analyze the drug samples that she analyzed, a process known as “dry-labbing” — was the “sole bad actor” at the Hinton lab and that there was “no evidence that any other chemist at the lab committed any malfeasance.”
Dookhan pleaded guilty in 2013 to 27 counts of tampering with evidence, misleading investigators, and filing false reports. She is currently free after serving less than five years incarcerated."
The entire story can be read at:
