Annie Dookhan not a get-out-of-jail card for everybody convicted of drug dealing

Two men convicted of drug dealing who asked to be let out of prison because of problems at state drug labs will stay in prison while their cases are reconsidered, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Landers Ivey, 53, demanded to be "immediately released" while his latest conviction was reviewed, because of the scandal at state drug labs, in particular the one in Jamaica Plain, where chemist Annie Dookhan is accused of just making results up.

But Regional Administrative Justice Jeffrey Locke declined Ivey's request, because Ivey failed to prove Dookhan had actually tested any of the OxyContin pills for which he pleaded guilty in 2010 to having shipped to a house in Dorchester from Florida, the DA's office says. In fact, Locke's decision says the record shows chemists other than Dookhan were responsible for testing the pills.

Locke issued a similar ruling for Paul Fidler, 48, convicted of selling heroin to an undercover cop in the South End, the DA's office reports. The five bags of alleged heroin Fidler was found with had been tested by Dookhan. But Locke noted Fidler's lengthy record for drug dealing and that after the Dookhan scandal broke, another chemist retested the bags and certified that they, in fact, contained heroin.

The two men still have pending petitions to have their verdicts overturned because of the Dookhan scandal.