STORY: "Rachael Collins seeks to overturn 'thousands' of Hinton drug lab cases, by Reporter Sean Philip Cotter, published by The Boston Herald on July 9, 2021.
GIST: "Suffolk District Attorney Rachel Rollins is asking the state’s highest court to toss “thousands” of convictions for which evidence was processed at the now-disgraced Hinton lab.
Rolllins’s office said Friday that the DA has filed a motion before the Supreme Judicial Court for a “global resolution of thousands of cases” that went through the William A. Hinton State Laboratory Institute.
Rollins says there are about 70,000 instances of samples from Suffolk County that went through the lab that still need to be reviewed. Her office said it’s not clear how many cases are involved, but it’s likely a large number.
Rollins in April pledged to dismiss Suffolk County drug convictions for any individual whose drug certification was done at the Hinton Lab between May 2003 and August 2012. That’s when chemists Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak were convicted of botching samples in what has become the worst case of its kind in the nation’s history.
Dookhan raced through tests falsifying evidence, prosecutors said. Farak was addicted to the drugs she was testing and was accused of smoking crack “10 to 12 times a day, including during work” at a lab in Amherst, according to a state probe.
To date, 35,000 drug convictions have been dismissed due to the drug lab scandals — that included the drug lab in Amherst — with the fallout spreading to other counties in the Bay State.
Both Dookhan and Farak served time and are now free. Dookhan spent three years in jail and was released in 2016; Farak was sentenced to 18 months and walked free in 2015. Both were part of a recent Netflix series that looked at the lab scandal.
Rollins’s motion is filed in a case that went through the Hinton lab in 2009, but whose evidence wasn’t handled by either Doohkan or Farak.
“This case is unfortunately one of too many where the integrity of the conviction is now suspect due to the notorious mismanagement that plagued the state’s main forensic testing facility, the Hinton Lab, for nearly a decade,’’ Rollins wrote in the filing. “We now know that there has been criminal misconduct by multiple chemists in the Commonwealth, each of whom worked for a period at the Hinton Lab. That, coupled with the documented gross mismanagement of the entire Lab does not and should not instill confidence in any of the work product coming from Hinton.”
Thee entire story can be read at:
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The entire release can be read at:
https://www.suffolkdistrictattorney.com/press-releases/items/hinton-lab-systemic-remedy
GIST: “We now know that there has been criminal misconduct by multiple chemists in the Commonwealth, each of whom worked for a period at the Hinton Lab. That, coupled with the documented gross mismanagement of the entire Lab does not and should not instill confidence in any of the work product coming from Hinton,’’ said DA Rollins in the filing. “As the government, we should be held to the highest of standards. When we fail, we must admit that failure and immediately implement changes to assure we don’t make the same mistakes twice. We should also make it easier, not harder, for the public to be made whole when we fail them. Piecemeal solutions do not get us there.”.......................The filing argues that a series of reported questions, “is the most direct and efficient way to address the need for global resolution and equitable justice for all of the defendants whose convictions were secured and rest on tainted Hinton Lab certifications. The full recognition of the huge impact of the wide-spread and systemic misconduct in the Hinton Lab can only be made at the appellate level.” Without a systemic solution or global resolution, DA Rollins’ Hinton Lab Initiative will have to proceed on a one-by-one case basis. “Systemic problems require systemic solutions. Forcing individual parties impacted by egregious and extensive governmental misconduct to litigate just resolutions in approximately 70,000 separate cases each infected with evidence from the Hinton Lab is grossly inefficient, patently unfair, and demonstrably inequitable. It is beyond dispute that the vast majority of the defendants impacted by the Hinton Lab misconduct are people of color, specifically Black and brown men,” the filing states. While the cases are all old, this is hardly an academic exercise. Collateral consequences of a criminal conviction can have life-long impacts on an individual’s capacity to gain employment, attend college, secure housing, and use government benefits, as well as many other opportunities. Prior convictions can result in longer sentences for an individual who may be found guilty in a subsequent offense. DA Rollins’ Office is the first in the state to take such broad affirmative action on all Hinton cases. “This shameful chapter of our history will take dedication and perseverance to undo,’’ said DA Rollins. “The public deserves to have faith in the government. If we continue to refuse to acknowledge our failures and misdeeds at the Hinton Lab, or cling to being right for fear of ‘opening the floodgates’ regarding the tens of thousands of impacted cases and individuals, we will have lost a tremendous opportunity to show true leadership and reconciliation.” She thanked participants in the Hinton Lab Initiative, including members of the criminal defense bar in general and Attorney Luke Ryan, in particular for their determination, dedication, and relentless pursuit in bringing all of the corruption at the lab to light.
The entire release can be read at:
https://www.suffolkdistrictattorney.com/press-releases/items/hinton-lab-systemic-remedy
