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What's the justification for that? What qualifies you to pass such a sentence, and what makes the sentence the justice system settled on inappropriate?
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[deleted]
What's the justification for that? What qualifies you to pass such a sentence, and what makes the sentence the justice system settled on inappropriate?
The OP is a bit outdated...Dookhan has since been sentenced to 3 to 5 years in prison: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/11/22/annie-dookhan-fo... The system is indeed in turmoil as it has to continue to review a massive number of cases. One of the worser case scenarios has since happened: a man who was freed because of possibly tainted evidence went on to allegedly murder someone http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the justification for that? What qualifies you to pass such a sentence, and what makes the sentence the justice system settled on inappropriate?
How about serving the sentences she was responsible for? Even if she served 1 day for every sentence that was a result of her intentional tampering of the evidence, she would be serving life.
what is her motive?
BTW, it might also be a nice way to explain why punishments tend to be so much harsher than for example in Europe - in the US can being 'tough on crime' be profitable.
34000 tainted cases is not "messed up big time". It's deliberate and malicious. And she gets 3-5 years? Bullshit.
34000 tainted cases is not "messed up big time". It's deliberate and malicious. And she gets 3-5 years? Bullshit.
She came forward. She came to police and honestly tried to fix it and guess what she got for that - a royally fucked life. I betcha there will not be any more volunteers like that.
http://blogs.mprnews.org/cities/2013/08/st-paul-police-crime...
It seems those problems are now mostly cleaned up, and there is no particular implication here that a similar problem exists in the state crime lab, but it is a very good idea for citizens to press law enforcement administrators to make sure that crime lab procedures are validated and standardized and checked and rechecked.
When I started reading the skeptical literature a decade or so ago, I was astonished to discover that even fingerprint identification is not a well standardized or well validated procedure. And I used to believe that defense attorneys (I am a lawyer by training, although I don't practice law) were mostly willfully ignorant of science when they cast doubt on DNA evidence. But now I heartily approve the side-effect of our adversary system of justice, which when it works best should have the "other side" questioning every form of evidence and putting it to the test of rigorous validation. I think too often people trying to solve the problem of crime through the criminal justice system look for quick answers rather than exact answers.
AFTER EDIT: This background article link
http://badchemistry.wbur.org/2013/05/19/annie-dookhan-and-th...
from the NPR affiliate in Boston updates the story and is more current than the NPR link kindly submitted here (which is from March 2013 rather than May 2013).