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State's district attorneys ordered to review 20,000 drug cases possibly screwed up by disgraced state chemist
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Dookhan
Why is she not spending the rest of her life in prison?
It seems to me that she committed outrageous abuses of state power, causing many people to be convicted illegally.
Why was she given a gentle handslap?
Was it because we assume that the abuses only hurt people who somehow deserved it? And we think that gross corruption will never hurt good people like us?
Because people who work for
Because people who work for the government are by and large above the law.
Go look up the statistics on how often prosecutorial misconduct results in actual charges being filed against prosecutors (short answer: rarely, if ever). This is in the same vein.
That part you missed ...
... the part where her supervisors encouraged the behavior and didn't question her.
Also the part where the workload was well beyond the number of staff members available.
Also the part where the police officials were cultivating her favor.
Read the whole story and start again. She did something criminally stupid, yes, but her supervisors liked that they didn't have to ask for more workers because their supervisors were playing the neoliberal productivity enforcement game, and the cops that loved her results on demand.
Also expect more cases like this as Charlie Baker continues to screw with numbers and demand that state agencies ignore enforcement of state laws that he finds inconvenient (like he tried to do in order to gut DEP) and lay off or force retirement of increasing numbers of workers each year.
Better call Saul
This decision is going to cost the taxpayers millions in lawsuits but it is the right decision.
If Cindy Lou Who has already
If Cindy Lou Who has already served her time, could she sue too?
What a waste...
To think of the hours upon hours or months upon months of hard police work and work by the district attorneys that will all be nullified because of Dookhan.
Legally it's the right thing to do. But it is very hard to swallow knowing that - in all likelihood - everything was done correctly by the letter of the law by the people actually investigating, just to be ruined later.
Anyone who is released is and was guilty, drugs are easily identifiable by those that know what they are looking for. It's a shame these dangerous criminals will be let out early to have another chance to jump back into their previous activities because of a technicality.
Drugs and violence go hand in hand, I hope the news outlets continue to report when those released are inevitably again arrested for violent and/or drug crimes.
Technicality? Well, so's the constitution, I guess
You may well be right - most of these people are guilty and are being let out because of Dookhan. But innocent people may have gone to prison because of her callous disregard for the truth. You OK with that?
possession of controlled substance crimes
If you were charged with possession of a controlled substance, and another crime that is not about possession of a controlled substance, and Dookhan "did" the "lab work" and you were found guilty of both, the former is premised in part on false testimony, and the second crime stands.
So what we are talking about are drug possession crimes, not other crimes like violence.
Why are we putting people in jail for taking illegal substances in the first place? Substance abuse is a health problem. Maybe we should try criminal justice reform, diversion and drug courts.
I would imagine its mostly people
who sold drugs, and not simply just used them. Right is right though and if a careless and/or lazy lab tech didn't do their job correctly and fairly, no punishment should stand.
late response...
Late response Adam...
I wholeheartedly believe that there is not one innocent person caught up in the Doohkan case.
Drug certificates in court are an afterthought. People are not arrested that often for "substances resembling drugs but are not really drugs" - it's not really a thing that comes up very often.
To release or let anyone go early on, yes, a "technicality" is a shame. Drugs are drugs very obviously, lab work or not, we aren't taking about drugs broken down into a liquid and sewn into jeans like the history channel.
Anyways, keep up the good work, appreciate your hard work on this website. Despite my disagreement with your stance sometimes, you report the fact without a bias.
Because you don't know any?
Ignoring that bit where they retested some stuff and did not find any drugs in it. Of course.
How does it take 5 years to
How does it take 5 years to get from the time the scandal made the news to the time the SJC came up with these guidelines?
Why was this not done within 5 weeks?
Violent Criminals?
These are not all violent criminals. There are some if not a lot with simple possession charges. Meaning amounts for personal use.
Free them all and put them
Free them all and put them back on the streets. It would save the taxpayers' money, and it certainly wouldn't harm me any.