20,000 Drug Cases To Be Thrown Out Because Of Crooked Chemist It's crazy to think one person could ruin so many lives over such a short period of time.Annie Dookhan, a former chemist for the state of Massachusetts, has been arrested and charged for inexplicably falsifying evidence in thousands of drug cases. So much so that upwards of 20,000 people who were arrested will have their verdicts overturned.According to reports, she was doing this for at least 10 years.
An investigation that year questioned the validity of her work, and in 2013 she pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including 17 counts of obstruction of justice and eight counts of tampering with evidence.
Williams said Dookhan was involved in roughly 24,000 questionable drug cases involving about 20,000 defendants. The cases were prosecuted in the Bristol, Cape & Islands, Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, Plymouth and Suffolk districts.
The district attorneys’ offices have until April 18 to notify the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court which among the cases involving Dookhan can realistically be retried.
For her role in what’s considered one of the largest drug lab scandals in U.S. history, Dookhan was sentenced to three to five years in prison. She was released on parole last year.
Dookhan’s sentence was, in some instances, less time than that served by the people she helped victimize.Prosecutors from the Massachusetts attorney general’s office have said Dookhan’s crimes caused “egregious damage” to the criminal justice system. But authorities have yet to offer an estimated tally of the financial damages to defendants and taxpayers. -(Huffington Post)
Get her outta here!!
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