Massachusett's chemist who falsified tests in criminal cases is going to jail.

Annie Dookhan, who was a state chemist for Massachusetts, pleaded guilty Friday and will serve three to five years in prison. As many as 350 people have already been released from jail as a result of her wrongdoing.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with this case but for those who are not, these two paragraphs sum it up pretty nicely:

After initially denying the charges, Ms. Dookhan, who was born in Trinidad, raised in Boston, and is now a single mother in her 30s, changed her plea Friday. She pleaded guilty to 27 charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, and tampering with evidence.

Dookhan's actions may have distorted the results of the criminal trials of more than 40,000 individuals, and close to 350 people have already been released from prison as a result, Boston public radio station WBUR reports. The Boston-area Department of Public Health laboratory where she had worked for 10 years was closed in August 2012 after the scandal surfaced, and the Associated Press reports that 1,100 criminal cases have been dismissed or not prosecuted as a result.

Dookhan was removed from her laboratory duties after she was caught forging a colleague's initials in June 2011, according to The New York Times. But she continued to serve as an expert court witness until she was put on administrative leave in February 2012. In August 2012, she admitted to having mishandled samples, and a subsequent investigation, CNN said, alleged that she had routinely tampered with criminal evidence by altering vials of substances awaiting evaluation for drug content. She altered them, allegedly, to cover up the practice of "dry labbing" samples, which means testing only a fraction of a group of samples before marking them all positive for illegal drugs.

source

3-5 YEARS? SERIOUSLY? We will never know exactly how many people were falsely convicted because of falsified lab results and expert testimony of this woman? The total impact of this woman's crimes in terms of lost years, damaged reputations, broken families, forfeited property, etc is incalculable. How many of her victims have done more time individually than this woman will do for all of the harm she's caused society? How is this remotely justice?

I have zero trust at this point for any side here. On the one hand, she may have done this, at the bidding of TPTB, and hence innocents went to jail. But on the other hand, this may be the way the nazi's did it, take out the worst criminals and put psycho's in charge of the SS.

So the second way this could be is she was pleading not guilty until TPTB Murder Incorporated threatened her and her children and so she pretended to cop a plea.

And none of us will ever know the truth until its exposed after we die. Living in a world like this is unbelievable.

reply to post by theantediluvian


Out of hundreds and hundreds of falsely imprisoned people who knows, maybe one or two will be there to pick her up when she gets out. Or even better maybe she'll run into a few folks she lied about to put away when she's in. I'm sure they'll be understanding.

Judge should of given her life for the lives shes destroyed.

Bassago
reply to post by theantediluvian
Or even better maybe she'll run into a few folks she lied about to put away when she's in. I'm sure they'll be understanding.

I was going to say the exact same thing. I couldn't say I'd fault anyone who decided to get a little justice of their own in prison. It certainly sounds like odds are she'll run across across a number of women in prison who she helped falsely convict.

1. This is someone who is amoral. This is a science experiment, as this person has no standard western judeo christian moral system. Really, what she did was wrong by any standard measure but hers. Amazing.

2. Here we see something interesting. If the State goes after you, puts you in their cross hairs, you're going down for life. If the State is embarrassed by you and has to deal with you, you're going down for the lowest possible time as the first plea bargain is given/taken to save everyone a lot of shame.

3. The Drug War, the War on drugs, a legally congressionally declared war, led to this, as in war the rules are suspended.

4. To what end? Are we so desperate to put people in jail, so crazed over jail for the scumbags, that we employed countless people like this to do what she did? Someone approved these actions, someone wanted this to happen, someone hired this woman because she would do this.

The scary thought: She's not the only one. How many of her are there at work?

reply to post by theantediluvian

she is not going to have a pleasant stay in prison thats for sure..i wonder how many people got screwed, looks like lots getting out but no way to get the time back

This is going on pretty heavily in every state due to overworking and impossible amounts of data to interpret because of all of the people going to jail over unjust laws that require "testing".