A Decade's Worth Of Meth Convictions Overturned Due To Drug Lab Employee's Misconduct
from the putting-'crime'-back-into-'crime-lab!' dept
Massachusetts prosecutors are seeing a bunch more Drug War wins turned into losses by drug lab misconduct. Annie Dookhan, a drug lab technician, falsified countless tests, ultimately resulting in the overturning of more than 20,000 convictions. Dookhan was valued for her productivity, but no one above her bothered to wonder why she was able to process samples so quickly. Turns out tests go much faster when you don't actually perform the tests.
If that were it, it would have been more than enough indication the nation's crime labs need more oversight and auditing. But it isn't. Another tech at another Massachusetts drug lab is erasing thousands of convictions. Chemist Sonja Farak, an 11-year veteran of the Amherst drug lab, apparently spent much of that time using the substances she was supposed to be testing, turning in falsified test results that landed people behind bars.
The Farak investigation uncovered the drug lab's lack of standards, which included more than allowing an employee to use drugs while on the clock for at least eight of the eleven years she was employed. There's no way of telling how many drug tests might be tainted, not just by employee malfeasance, but by a lack of best practices, like running blanks through testing equipment to ensure new tests weren't tainted by residue left behind by previous tests.
The total number of convictions expected to be thrown out due to Farak's abuse is currently sitting at 7,690 cases. But this won't be the final total. Zach Huffman of Courthouse News Service reports an entire decade's-worth of convictions is being examined.
Expanding relief for a class of drug defendants whose cases crossed paths with a now-disgraced chemist, the highest court in Massachusetts agreed Thursday to throw out nearly a decade’s worth of meth convictions plus all cases from the chemist’s last four years on the job.
The state wants the bleeding to stop at 8,000 cases -- covering only those where Farak signed the drug certificate. But as the court points out in its order [PDF], this isn't just about Farak. It's about the drug lab that protected Farak and the prosecutors that protected the drug lab -- the latter of which included hiding evidence of misconduct from accused drug offenders.
The respondent Attorney General contests the petitioners' proposed remedy, as well as the result suggested by the district attorneys. The Attorney General proposes a different remedy. Based on Farak's admission that she began to tamper with other chemists' samples in the summer of 2012, the Attorney General contends that those defendants whose drug samples were tested between June, 2012, and Farak's arrest in January, 2013, should be offered the opportunity to obtain relief under the protocol established by this court in Bridgeman v. District Attorney for the Suffolk Dist., 476 Mass. 298, 316-317 (2017) (Bridgeman II).
We conclude that Farak's widespread evidence tampering has compromised the integrity of thousands of drug convictions apart from those that the Commonwealth has agreed should be vacated and dismissed. Her misconduct, compounded by prosecutorial misconduct, requires that this court exercise its superintendence authority and vacate and dismiss all criminal convictions tainted by governmental wrongdoing.
The AG's suggested fix is completely inadequate. The court's final decision covers far more than the limited one-year window of adjacent convictions the AG was willing to toss.
The class of "Farak defendants" includes all defendants who pleaded guilty to a drug charge, admitted to sufficient facts on a drug charge, or were found guilty of a drug charge, where (i) Farak signed the certificate of analysis; (ii) the conviction was based on methamphetamine and the drugs were tested during Farak's tenure at the Amherst lab; or (iii) the drugs were tested at the Amherst lab on or after January 1, 2009, and through January 18, 2013, regardless of who signed the certificate of analysis.
It is impossible this is the only state where this sort of misconduct has occurred. Testing drug samples is like any other job -- people will cut corners. But it also offers something for those with drug problems and those seeking to personally profit from their employment. Something other jobs don't offer: unfettered access to controlled substances. People will be people and drugs will disappear and results will be faked. The problem is this employee misconduct costs people their freedom. And from what's been observed in two major cases in Massachusetts, the entities overseeing these labs don't care about the collateral damage until a court forces them to.
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Filed Under: annie dookhan, drug lab, massachusetts, meth convictions, misconduct, sonja farak
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Tested in Full
Well they maybe didn't use the proper lab equipment but they personally tested all the samples they could - that should count for something shouldn't it?
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Re: Tested in Full
Ingest sample -> no high -> must be fale drugs -> give positive result out of vindictiveness over not getting the expected high
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Countermeasures
Similarly, there should be periodic submissions of known innocuous substances, also as "Potential controlled substance." Labs that fail to report that innocuous substance as safe are then audited to find how they miscategorized donut sugar (for example) as a controlled substance.
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Re: Countermeasures
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Re: Countermeasures
Wouldn't a more effective method be to require the testers to work in pairs at all times, at least when they have their hands on the stuff? And to switch up the pairings from time to time?
It's much harder to keep illegal stuff a secret with more people knowing about it. And people are less likely to break the law with others watching them.
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What I still don't get...
Putting alcohol into your bloodstream: perfectly legal. Putting methamphetamines into your bloodstream: illegal. Putting oxycodone, or other doctor-prescribed opiates, into your bloodstream: perfectly legal. Putting opium (the original opioid) into your bloodstream: illegal. Smoking a cigarette: perfectly legal. Smoking marijuana: illegal.
I look at the list of what is legal to put into your body, and what isn't, and it doesn't look like the drugs on the latter list pose any risk that the ones on the former list don't also pose.
It seems to me that if society has determined that it's impossible to prohibit the consumption of alcohol under the theory that people ought to be able to drink if they want (and you can't really effectively stop them anyway), the same should apply to other chemicals.
If that chemical causes you to harm someone, then you should, of course be held responsible for that harm (especially so if you know that you're more likely to harm others when under the influence of that chemical). But it seems to me that people are killing and dying in the name of the new Prohibition far in excess to any harm that the laws criminalizing drug use are supposedly preventing.
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Re: What I still don't get...
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Re: What I still don't get...
That said, the allowance of compounds like alcohol, that show lower rates of addiction and have a higher threshold for overdose, is known to be positive to worker morale and helps to placate the masses.
That said, if they had a choice, alcohol prohibition would likely still be a thing. One of the few means of legal slavery is imprisonment. It is no coincidence that the first compounds made illegal in the wake of the lifting of prohibition were used primarily by Blacks and Latinos.
Opiates have reasons for being on the lists. It is highly addictive even in the short term, and highly debilatative as the addiction develops. Our current Opiate crisis is driven in part by failures of Doctors to heed those reasons and the deliberate disregard by pharmaceutical companies.
But not all Prohibition is about safety. Jeff Sessions comments about the dangers of Marijuana are proof of that. Despite significant individual claims of medical benefit, the DOJ still prevents any significant study. Scientists who backed the initial MJ ban did so with the caveat that the ban was intended to be short term while studies were done. They were not.
If the goal were actually to reduce the use of recreational compounds, free treatment and counseling have shown marked reductions in drug related casualties. They want slaves to shove into for profit prisons.
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Re: Re: What I still don't get...
Hey! Stop looking in my trash can full of sugary drinks.
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Re: Re: Re: What I still don't get...
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Re: What I still don't get...
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Testing services..
While working retail, we get updated and Evaluated all the time..
from SHOPPERS(paid to see how we work) to changes int he paper work(no no reasons except to see if you read it)..
And other ways that can end up costing you your job..
WTF?? happened here?? no checks and balance for HOW MANY years??
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Re: Testing services..
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Re: Re: Testing services..
The big problem is that there was no oversight, no internal checks (hand the same sample to two chemists and compare results) and none of the higher-ups willing to take responsibility for the mess.
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Re: Re: Testing services..
But why? They were, for a decade, getting exactly the results they wanted. Quickly too.
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Re: Testing services..
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Moral Busybodies in Government and You
Massachusetts prosecutors are seeing a bunch more Drug War wins turned into losses by drug lab misconduct.
Even when the government "wins" they are all losses.
In a so-called free/open society - which the US constantly postulates itself as being - when the government arbitrarily decrees certain substances verboten all of the ingredients are present for the freedom destroying recipe of tyranny (ie rule of man).
The US governments drug war is a complete/abject failure whose results clearly show millions of human beings lives and generations of families destroyed along with the squandering of at least one trillion tax dollars on the failed triple boondoggle of eradication, interdiction and incarceration.
http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/drug-war-statistics
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Re: Moral Busybodies in Government and You
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Re: Re: Moral Busybodies in Government and You
You are correct in the summary of results, but you fail to see that it's working exactly as intended. Its purpose has always been to oppress and to move money into certain pockets.
I agree.
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End results?
So falsely convicted inmates are being released from jail as a result of this, right?
Or are they still languishing in prison despite the doubt of their guilt?
I might be paranoid, but unless I explicitly read the number of inmates set free as a result, it's safer to assume their situation hasn't changed, despite the misconduct discovered in their respective cases. We like to keep people in jail, even when they're determined to be innocent.
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"The problem"
That's just the start. You cost the people who would otherwise have been found innocent people their freedom, cost the taxpayers the cost of the lawsuits, cost society the cost of the people who would otherwise have been found guilty people being back out on the street.
So what happens to those who protected her?
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Re: "The problem"
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Re: Re: "The problem"
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There's a bigger problem here...
There's no way even the most incompetent Public Defender didn't challenge and have an evidentiary sample re-tested at a different lab.
Which means the lab was *supplying* tainted samples when one was requested.
The FBI Lab was caught doing this kind of crap 20-25 years back, the lab techs were asking who the agents wanted the samples to match to.
As I recall, not much came of it so far as overturning cases or releasing the falsely convicted. The FBI was allowed to "handle it internally".
The $20 "Test your kids" tests most pharmacies carry are pretty accurate - and they don't test positive for samples of sugar, baby powder, or plaster dust.
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"Nope, this isn't legit, it's criminally bad shit, I also 'tested' it."
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Re:
Getting and keeping people drug and drug-crime free is much more nebulous, especially when it goes unreported and unsolved, especially if the addicts have a bit of money.
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Re:
Why are matters like this being farmed out to private companies? Companies don't have the welfare of their client in mind; they're only focused on profits.
Because certain idiots have bought into the notion that government is, in and of itself, inherently corrupt and incompetent and that the invisible hand of the market is the most efficient way of allocating resources.
They pretend to pay attention when you point out that the profit motive inherently results in perverse incentives, then snap back to default because they're emotionally invested in their ideology.
Unfortunately, so many people have bought into this ideology that nothing will change until the number of adversely affected people is greater than the number of True Believers.
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Tactical Pants
Yet these prosecutors judges and the rest never seem to have the bright lights shine on them to reveal their corruption for all to see.
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Drug labs botch
What happened to the mgrs. who were directing these lab techs.? No where have I heard anything about them folks being held to account. Maybe you can look into that?
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