Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Government Chemist Tampered With 40,000 Cases

filmingcops.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 173 posts

Re: Government Chemist Tampered With 40,000 Cases

#141

Post by sigstoat »

Crito wrote: post #139
sigstoat wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fwiw, to be a DEA registered lab, and thus, have known marijuana (or other controlled substances) just hanging around, you've got to keep it locked up such that it requires two people to access it, and you've got to track it (very precisely) by weight. and the DEA can check your records any time. they have caught at least some people (who were "diverting" cocaine up their nose) with this.

What is to prevent the chemist from just cutting the coke after snorting some of it. Coke comes in 10% baking soda, goes out 15% baking soda, and who is in charge of figuring that out? The person that did it...

you realize that would help the defendant, if anything, right? perhaps even to the extent of getting the evidence excluded entirely?

(also chemists generally don't want some random guy's cocaine. they know the awful shit street drugs get cut with. once you're DEA registered, you can basically just order pure drugs from the government. that's the stuff that gets diverted, and it's also how you'd up the concentration of a defendant's sample.)

even so, that's why two people are supposed to be present for the handling, and samples should be homogenized early on and then split up for independent testing if the defendant wants it. add on lots of tamper evident tape, etc.

Re: Government Chemist Tampered With 40,000 Cases

#142

Post by malandrew »

jjoonathan wrote: post #6

3-5 years?! THREE TO FIVE YEARS???!!! There are no words. Agents of the law need to be held more accountable for their actions than your average citizen, not less. This is disgusting.

3-5 years is fine as long as everyone else who colluded or was complicit also gets caught up in this, especially DAs. The citizens of Massachusetts should demand a thorough clean up of the lab to bring it back to reputability, and that means cleaning house.

I reckon that all other 49 states should see this as a sign to perform their own audits. I just hope that if such audits are performed, that they don't get swept under the rug. Otherwise the problem will be solved, but many who didn't get due process will continue to rot in jail so that other states can save face.

20+ year jail sentences are already excessive for the overwhelming majority of people in jail with 20+ year sentences.

Re: Government Chemist Tampered With 40,000 Cases

#143

Post by Crito »

sigstoat wrote: post #141
Crito wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is to prevent the chemist from just cutting the coke after snorting some of it. Coke comes in 10% baking soda, goes out 15% baking soda, and who is in charge of figuring that out? The person that did it...

you realize that would help the defendant, if anything, right? perhaps even to the extent of getting the evidence excluded entirely? (also chemists generally don't want some random guy's cocaine. they know the awful shit street drugs get cut with. once you're DEA registered, you can basically just order pure drugs from the government. that's the stuff that gets diverted, and it's also how you'd up the concentration o…

I am responding to this section of your comment:

"and the DEA can check your records any time. they have caught at least some people (who were "diverting" cocaine up their nose) with this."

It would be trivial for any chemist to "divert" cocaine up their nose and not get caught if they put some thought into it. As you said, some already do "divert" cocaine up their nose, so obviously some chemists are interested in random guy's cocaine. If the DEA is catching people through record keeping, you can be sure there are some chemists who sensibly doctor the records at the same time.

If the chemist is interested in doctoring lab results to screw over a defendant (rather than get high).... well shit, we already know that is possible, don't we? That is the entire point of this discussion. There is really absolutely no sense in arguing that chemists cannot doctor evidence to send some guy up the river, we already know that they can.

Re: Government Chemist Tampered With 40,000 Cases

#144

Post by malandrew »

kabdib wrote: post #127
msandford wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I think this is a situation where the death penalty is entirely appropriate. I don't like the idea of more suffering when there is already plenty to go around here, but I can't see how you can call it "justice" if she is allowed to live. An example must be set that this kind of thing is so repugnant to civilized societies that it WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. EDIT: The scale of her crimes is thousands of person-yea…

Revenge is useless. Deterrence is not. Go after the prosecutors who were involved. Conspiracy is often thrown at "peon" types, from those emails it makes sense that at least some of the prosecutors knew what was going on. You want to hammer these wastes of oxygen and make it clear that corruption will not be tolerated. Never going to happen, of course. It's easier to just kill someone, and who's going to prosecute th…

I feel like that should be made into a latin phrase like "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

Someone better versed in Latin may need to double check this:

"Quis prosequiet ipsos prosecutores?"

Re: Government Chemist Tampered With 40,000 Cases

#145

Post by malandrew »

sejje wrote: post #100
jjoonathan wrote: post #6

3-5 years?! THREE TO FIVE YEARS???!!! There are no words. Agents of the law need to be held more accountable for their actions than your average citizen, not less. This is disgusting.

I agree, in context. If she's purposely stolen years and years from others' lives, she needs to be held accountable for each and every instance. And the idea that this happened in a laboratory doesn't make it any milder...this is, in my opinion, far worse than most violent crimes. I think the time served should be very long, given that most of our violent crimes have very long terms. That said, I think we need to rev…

    "... she needs to be held accountable for each and every 
    instance."
Accountability is nice, but let's not lose sight of the bigger picture here which is a sharp correction of the system that not only allowed her to carry on for years, but more than likely actively encouraged her.

Personally, instead of having her serve a 100 year jail sentence, I would have no problem letting get a jail sentence of 1 year if it meant that everyone else complicit in these crimes also got 1 year of jail. Spreading it among all those responsible is a much bigger deterrent than throwing one person under the bus.

Going to jail for a serious crime you are guilty of is a lottery. It is a much more effective deterrent when being found guilty and spending time in jail is a likely event when a crime actually occurs."

Re: Government Chemist Tampered With 40,000 Cases

#146

Post by gaius »

forktheif wrote: post #132

I find it disappointing that the majority of posts here only want revenge with long sentences or even death, and only a minority want to change the system or put systems in place to make this less likely to happen again.

It's a deterrent, so it's both.

Re: Government Chemist Tampered With 40,000 Cases

#147

Post by kubiiii »

whiddershins wrote: post #11

How hard would it have been to insert a random cross check in to the system? So every 300 tests, the sample is retested by another lab? There's no motivation or incentive whatsoever to structure the process to decrease convictions, that is one of the unspoken but defining features of our legal system. There is an ideal that two sides are arguing something in a neutral setting, but one side is the government, and lite…

A simpler validation process would be to compare the positive/negative ratio a chemist in a similar position produces. This would only involve sharing very small datasets between labs.

Re: Government Chemist Tampered With 40,000 Cases

#149

Post by barbs »

Crito wrote: post #69
trekky1700 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By god, is the human race so savage that we resort to killing so quickly. This is a life, something some people would consider priceless. Not something you can view arithmetically, calculating the hours in damage caused versus somebody's time left.

Do we actually think that a human life is priceless, or is that just something that we say that we think to make ourselves feel good about ourselves? We regularly put a price on human life in civil cases, and that price always seems to be finite and fairly low.

Related blog post: http://squid314.livejournal.com/260949.html

By the way, very insightful discussion here!

Re: Government Chemist Tampered With 40,000 Cases

#150

Post by sergiosgc »

jjoonathan wrote: post #6

3-5 years?! THREE TO FIVE YEARS???!!! There are no words. Agents of the law need to be held more accountable for their actions than your average citizen, not less. This is disgusting.

Oh, don't worry. She screwed over 40000 people. The number of lawsuits she'll have to defend against should see her ass parked in court for a decade. Even without any conviction.
Post reply on HN