On Wednesday, January 18th, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court refused to outright dismiss the nearly 21,000 drug related criminal cases that have been found to be linked to chemist, Annie Dookhan, who faked test results in order to favor the government.  Dookhan, formerly of the Hinton State Laboratory Institute, pleaded guilty in 2013 to 27 charges related to obstruction of justice.  She was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Carol S. ball to three to five years in a state prison, with two years of probation following completion of her prison sentence.  Dookhan had no prior criminal history.  However, the ramifications of her actions were extensive, affecting thousands of defendants being held on drug related charges.

Image Courtesy of Alternet

Prior to instituting the new time frames, it was usually left up to defendants to appeal their convictions on an individual basis.  Of the 21,000 notices sent to alleged offenders indicating their cases are moving forward, only 2,000 chose to seek new trials.  It is thought that this low response rate was due to the perceived validity of evidence submitted by a licensed chemist, which is rarely questioned.  The defendants chose not to bother trying to prove false results, and so their fate was left up to the court to decide.Given public information that Dookhan's testing could be defective, it is thought that a much larger number of defendants will now chose to petition for a new trial.  Whether the results are valid or not, defendants are likely to believe they have a better shot at proving innocence.  And, given the newly instituted time frames, it will be much easier for them to put the proper measures into place for doing so.  This means there could be a substantial increase in demand for court resources, so prosecutors have been cautioned against choosing to pursue too many of these cases and overburdening the judicial system.  All evidence will need to be carefully reviewed, and if there is simply not enough or if there's any question at all that the evidence has been tampered with, a case should be dismissed.

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Prison for a State Chemist Who Faked Drug EvidenceAnnie Dookhan Pleads Guilty to Tampering with Evidence, Obstruction of Justice