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Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

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Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#61

Post by lvs »

chimeracoder wrote: post #35

> "It's unsettling and maddening, because you're now going to have a lot of people get released to the street prematurely," says Middlesex County District attorney Gerry Leone, one of many hoping the state supreme court will curb the releases. That's a pretty bad way of looking at this, because it assumes that those people deserved to be behind bars to begin with, and ignores those that didn't. How about, "It's unset…

Worse:

>"We tell them, 'Listen, we know what you were doing before and we're watching you. And if you go back into the life, that Dookhan's not there anymore. So when you go [back] in on this charge, it's gonna stick,'" Davis says.

So, Ed Davis is sending officers to threaten people who, from a legal perspective, have not been convicted of a crime and have been erroneously jailed for years. Lovely. That's really icing on the cake.

I'm not happy about putting potential dealers back on the street, but we are a nation of laws, and these people will be freed by our courts. You can't have the police commissioner sending people to threaten them.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#62

Post by Crito »

jfim wrote: post #38
nimble wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, 3-5 years sounds pretty reasonable. If you think about it, you should be glad that she didn't get a crazy "send a message" punishment of 20 years or life in prison. She'll never work in that capacity again, so it's not like there's a need to separate her from society for the protection of society. A better question to address is how a single rogue person could do so much damage. This is institutional failur…

> This is institutional failure. Indeed. I wonder how hard it would be to have random testing of the chemists' work.

I believe part of the accusations are that she actually tainted evidence. So testing her results would not be sufficient, you would need to test samples that she never had access to in the first place.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#63

Post by Crito »

sigstoat wrote: post #45
thaumasiotes wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She'll never work in that capacity again How do you know? Getting rehired is routine for misbehaving cops.

the forensic community is pretty good about these things. the folks who do these things get whispered about like a bogeyman for years. everybody in this woman's field knows about her now, and will be googling up "massachusetts chemist" for the next 20 years whenever they get a female chemist from massachusetts applying for a position.

She lied about her credentials once, what is to stop her from lying about her background again?

The risk posed by allowing her to walk free in society is too great; she should be indefinitely detained.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#64

Post by Crito »

stdbrouw wrote: post #24
dreamdu5t wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Justice is about more than retribution.

There is more to consider than merely justice. We also have to protect society from her. How could she ever possibly be trusted again to anything? Hell, I wouldn't even trust her to bag my groceries. She lied about her background once, and harmed thousands of people. Who is to say that in 20 years she won't be found under another name, in another state, running this or another scam again?

If our system was set up to rehabilitate, that would be great, but it isn't. As long as she remains un-rehabilitated, she should be kept locked up. Not out of some sense of justice or for retribution, but simply to keep her from harming others again.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#65

Post by rdtsc »

Symmetry wrote: post #32
honzzz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only speculate about her motives. But the system that is set in such a way that prisons can be privately owned and prisoners exploited for personal gain is a recipe for disaster. Stakeholders making profit from prisoners have a strong incentive to somehow ensure that as many people as possible get sent to prison for as long as possible no matter whether they are guilty or not. Some might decide to achieve this…

Massachusetts doesn't have private prisons, so I doubt that's the problem here. It's more that putting people behind bars is politically good for prosecutor with ambitions. Martha Coakly was almost elected Senator despite or maybe because of her role in a literal witch hunt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fells_Acres_Day_Care_Center_pre...

It could also be purely ideological or psychological. It might give her a kick to have that power or she thinks if police suspects someone they are probably already guilty and deserve to be locked away and punished.

It would be an interesting study to see if she had access to pictures, gender, race, income, age of those whose results she forged.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#66

Post by sigstoat »

Crito wrote: post #63
sigstoat wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the forensic community is pretty good about these things. the folks who do these things get whispered about like a bogeyman for years. everybody in this woman's field knows about her now, and will be googling up "massachusetts chemist" for the next 20 years whenever they get a female chemist from massachusetts applying for a position.

She lied about her credentials once, what is to stop her from lying about her background again? The risk posed by allowing her to walk free in society is too great; she should be indefinitely detained.

maybe it would be more constructive to address that reply to someone talking about her sentencing? i haven't expressed an opinion on it either way.

as far as lying about her background, criminal background checks are par for the course in this line of business. anything drug related ever, or anything indicating a propensity for lying are automatic disqualifications.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#67

Post by Crito »

sigstoat wrote: post #66
Crito wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She lied about her credentials once, what is to stop her from lying about her background again? The risk posed by allowing her to walk free in society is too great; she should be indefinitely detained.

maybe it would be more constructive to address that reply to someone talking about her sentencing? i haven't expressed an opinion on it either way. as far as lying about her background, criminal background checks are par for the course in this line of business. anything drug related ever, or anything indicating a propensity for lying are automatic disqualifications.

I am addressing this: "everybody in this woman's field knows about her now, and will be googling up "massachusetts chemist" for the next 20 years whenever they get a female chemist from massachusetts applying for a position." Googling a liar is a poor defense.

Background checks obviously didn't figure out that she was lying the first time. Why should we trust them a second time?

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#68

Post by malandrew »

judk wrote: post #18

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2012/12/20/in... The DA is already covering up and defending the prosecutor's involvement, saying there is nothing wrong with prosecutors telling Dhookan what test results they needed to get their convictions, in clear violation of proper experimental procedures.

There should be a chinese wall between the crime lab and the DA. All the DA should be able to do is submit evidence and any matching of that evidence to the accused should be a complete black box as far as the DA is concerned.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#69

Post by malandrew »

nimble wrote: post #36
vsviridov wrote: post #3

34000 tainted cases is not "messed up big time". It's deliberate and malicious. And she gets 3-5 years? Bullshit.

Actually, 3-5 years sounds pretty reasonable. If you think about it, you should be glad that she didn't get a crazy "send a message" punishment of 20 years or life in prison. She'll never work in that capacity again, so it's not like there's a need to separate her from society for the protection of society. A better question to address is how a single rogue person could do so much damage. This is institutional failur…

I'm fine with 3-5 years so long as everyone else responsible in this situation, including DAs are subject to due process as well. There is no way that one person is responsible for almost 34k tampered cases all on her own without many other people being involved or at least aware.

I'm not a fan of our overly aggressive justice system, but if it is going to be overly aggressive, it needs to apply equally aggressively to the watchers as well. Any asymmetry in application of the current practices leaves far more room for abuse in the future than one that is applied equally to all parties. Justice is blind. If she is going to aggressively wield her sword, both your standard street thugs and corrupt government officials should have equal chance of getting struck by her sword.

We can't let the entire system throw her under the bus for 20+ years, while many other guilty parties get away after having been complicit or actively colluded.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#70

Post by malandrew »

paulftw wrote: post #26
vsviridov wrote: post #3

34000 tainted cases is not "messed up big time". It's deliberate and malicious. And she gets 3-5 years? Bullshit.

34000 over nearly a decade career. It's 9.3 cases per day for 10 years, without weekends, vacations or holidays. And 45 minutes of work per case. Provided she had 7hr working day and a lunch break. And she occasionally testified in courts. How is that even possible?

Excellent question and one that raises another one. Could she possibly have tainted that many cases working alone? If not, we should be looking at every one around her including the DA.

Simple network analysis of every person (arresting officer, DA and other crime lab technicians) involved in these ~34k cases should be able to come up with a dozen or so people that warrant additional scrutiny.

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