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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

#71

Post by malandrew »

bmelton wrote: post #53
analog31 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they elected?

Only the actual district attorney is elected, and the DA is seldom responsible for the actual trying of cases. The DA is usually pretty far removed from the minutia of actual casework.

Social network analysis using known tampered cases should be enough to highlight all the DAs that could require further scrutiny. I would not be surprised if SNA shows that a few DAs in particular show up over and over and over again in these tampered cases. AFAIK, the DAs are the civil servants with the most to gain and lose from conviction rates and therefore are the most likely to have been involved, assuming others collaborated or were at least complicit.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#72

Post by malandrew »

wcummings wrote: post #7
yeukhon wrote: post #4

what is her motive?

"Putting drug dealers in jail", to only very loosely paraphrase her words. She was working with the prosecutors. The news loves to call her a "rogue chemist" to misdirect. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2012/12/20/in...

Yup, standard throw her under the bus tactic as misdirection.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#73

Post by sigstoat »

Crito wrote: post #67
sigstoat wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

i think you're somehow confused about the core concept of a background check.

i think also that you've got a bone to pick, and you're trying to figure out who it is with. good luck there, little buddy.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#74

Post by weixiyen »

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…

or both?

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#75

Post by malandrew »

I would love to see every single email by DAs that include her name subpoenaed.

    "The report shows that the Hinton lab leaned heavily on 
    Dookhan’s productivity. Supervisors lauded her work ethic 
    and assigned her an increasing share of tests."[0]
We should know what her supervisors and DA were saying in private about her work to her and to one another. There is no way that someone is so much more productive, without anyone ever suspecting wrongdoing and turning a blind eye to all this. Anyone who had ever expressed suspicion of her work, but never raised the issue should be liable for criminal negligence here.

[0] http://badchemistry.wbur.org/2013/05/15/annie-dookhan-drug-t...

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#76

Post by Crito »

sigstoat wrote: post #73
Crito wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Background checks obviously didn't figure out that she was lying the first time. Why should we trust them a second time? i think you're somehow confused about the core concept of a background check. i think also that you've got a bone to pick, and you're trying to figure out who it is with. good luck there, little buddy.

If you think a criminal background check is going to be effective at ensuring this woman will never work in this particular field again, that may be one thing, but you were suggesting that mere awareness of this woman would cause potential future employers to use Google to ensure that they never hired her. This would of course be ineffective, since she has been proven to be a liar.

I don't know why you think I have a bone to pick... You seem a little annoyed that I am responding to something that you did not mean to be your primary point. You are going to have to find a way to cope with that.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#77

Post by veemjeem »

malandrew wrote: post #69
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…

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…

Yeah, based on the email content from the prosecutors, it looks like they were in on it too. How does a 50lbs package of marijuana magically become 80lbs as requested by the prosecutor? It sounds like the entire system is corrupt.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#78

Post by veemjeem »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #22
matthewmacleod wrote: post #16

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.

I feel like there must be others who share the responsibility. There's no way a single chemist could be the source of 34,000 convictions. Since they found a second chemist tainting the results at the lab, I'm guessing the entire prosecution system is corrupted.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#79

Post by malandrew »

veemjeem wrote: post #77
malandrew wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, based on the email content from the prosecutors, it looks like they were in on it too. How does a 50lbs package of marijuana magically become 80lbs as requested by the prosecutor? It sounds like the entire system is corrupt.

Prosecutors are the ones I want most to see investigated here. I would not be surprised is this is a real life example of Stanley Milgram's 1963 obedience to authority experiments.

From Wikipedia:

    If at any time the subject indicated his desire to halt the experiment, 
    he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this 
    order:[1]

        1) Please continue.
        2) The experiment requires that you continue.
        3) It is absolutely essential that you continue.
        4) You have no other choice, you must go on.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were emails from prosecutors that essentially parroted these instructions in a more indirect form.

"Please examine the evidence again."

"Finding justice requires that you examine the evidence again"

"It is absolutely essential that you examine the evidence again"

"You have no other choice, you must examine the evidence again"

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#80

Post by HNLogInsSuckAss »

tokenadult wrote: post #30

Minnesota Public Radio reported often about systemic problems in the St. Paul, Minnesota crime lab over the last few years. 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…

Reminds me of another case in Chicago or Cook County a few years ago where another bitch did the same thing.
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