MARCH 10, 2014
On March 5, 2013, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) issued its decision in Commonwealth v. Scott, relative to the standard for permitting a criminal defendant to withdraw his guilty plea in cases in which Annie Dookhan, the state forensic drug chemist, was directly involved in the analysis of drug evidence that preceded the defendant’s guilty plea. In doing so, the SJC has announced a new standard applicable to guilty pleas to address the hundreds of criminal drug cases that potentially involved Dookhan’s misconduct and may have interfered with the proper administration of criminal justice.
The SJC’s opinion recounts in detail Dookhan’s extensive misconduct and the investigations that exposed it. Dookhan’s alleged misconduct, which began as early as 2004 and occurred into 2011, included removing drug samples against lab protocol; forging the initials of evidence officers on lab records; improperly grouping samples from a number of cases together, and reporting results for all sample tests that applied only to a few tests; and intentionally contaminating samples, including turning negative samples into positive samples. Because Dookhan’s misconduct seems to have been motivated only by a desire to increase her apparent productivity, Dookhan has been unable to identify those specific cases in which she improperly tested samples or inaccurately reported on tested samples.
Posted by Parker Scheer LLP | Permalink | Email This Post
Posted In: Controlled Substances , Criminal Activity , Criminal Allegations , Criminal Defense , Drug Offense
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