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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

#91

Post by chris_wot »

malandrew wrote: post #70
paulftw wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, it says that someone was let out because she was a secondary chemist. So in other words, if she even came close to working on a case, then it's suspect.

Not to mention, she falsified lab results to the degree that she didn't even do any testing at all on many samples. That's pretty much close to zero time to file the report.

When it comes to intent - she deliberately tainted some samples! Gotta ask yourself why.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#92

Post by marrs »

lvs wrote: post #61
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 icin…

How is he threatening them? He was telling repeat offenders that the police are going to be keeping a close eye on them. That's their job, isn't it? Or would you rather he tell them that the police will be away on holiday all next week, "but please call our support centre if you plan on committing any crime and we'll get our duty officer to log a ticket"?

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#93

Post by chris_wot »

Zigurd wrote: post #56
scotch_drinker wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of painting with a very wide brush, DAs aren't incentivized to make sure people get due process. They are incentivized to convict as many people as possible. In multiple cases here in Texas where later DNA evidence overturned rape and murder charges, the DA argued right up until the moment of reversal that they believed totally in the guilt of the accused. They have to, it's their job and to have public d…

How likely this went on as long as it did without the collaboration of prosecutors?

The DA resigned when it became known he regularly communicated with the chemist.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#94

Post by Shivetya »

marrs wrote: post #92
lvs wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 icin…

How is he threatening them? He was telling repeat offenders that the police are going to be keeping a close eye on them. That's their job, isn't it? Or would you rather he tell them that the police will be away on holiday all next week, "but please call our support centre if you plan on committing any crime and we'll get our duty officer to log a ticket"?

they aren't repeat offenders if the evidence used against them was fraudulent. If that evidence was the basis of their conviction they should be free and this prosecutor should be out of a job for such threats.

Look, he only does this because his position is mostly safe for him to abuse. He has already declared all these people guilty, sadly I bet he is more upset the chemist was caught than the possibility people were wrongfully convicted.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#95

Post by Zmetta »

Crito wrote: post #54
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.

Forensic science in general is an absolute joke. It makes a mockery of the very concept of science. There are a few isolated pockets where the techniques and procedures used are sound, but for the most part the scientific method and rigor are nowhere to be seen.

Care to cite anything about this? From a Biochemist's perspective, when done properly, chemical analysis is extremely accurate and provides a great deal of information.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#96

Post by Elrac »

Zigurd wrote: post #56
scotch_drinker wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of painting with a very wide brush, DAs aren't incentivized to make sure people get due process. They are incentivized to convict as many people as possible. In multiple cases here in Texas where later DNA evidence overturned rape and murder charges, the DA argued right up until the moment of reversal that they believed totally in the guilt of the accused. They have to, it's their job and to have public d…

How likely this went on as long as it did without the collaboration of prosecutors?

Collaboration? AFAICT we have lots of reason to suspect that it happened at the _instigation_ of the prosecutors!

By all means, throw the book at the dishonest chemist, but I want to see heads on pikes (or at least a legal equivalent) for the justice-perverting rat finks that set her up to it.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#97

Post by Elrac »

malandrew wrote: post #85

In one of the threads about this scandal someone said that it would be valuable to send known negative samples to a lab and check which ones come back positive, so that we can investigate whether misconduct was involved. This is basically equivalent to unit testing, since they are known assert(false) tests. Unit tests can be devised to test crime labs, district attorneys, law enforcement officers, judges, etc. This m…

I like your idea! In an evidence based society, it might be picked up and spread like wildfire.

Of us (by majority, here) programming nerds, who wouldn't want to write better programs? Which consumer doesn't want better product safety? Which government could fail to want more truth-based justice?

But the USA is far from an evidence based society. It's a society where, in the interest of perpetuating religions, intellect is trumped by superstition and evidence by authority. As a side effect, justice is predicated on vengeance rather than reform.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#98

Post by Elrac »

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.

I call it "going through the motions of science" in order to be able to claim scientific objectivity.

There certainly is a science of forensics, but I think that what happens in a crime lab relates to that science like plumbing relates to hydrodynamics: it's technology, not science.

Done right, this technology leads to results that are generally more reliable than eyewitnesses and other forms of circumstantial evidence. But it's a mistake to consider a technology infallible just because it's based on science. The Scientific Method cannot rule out accident, human error, and malice.

Re: Crime Lab Scandal Leaves Massachusetts Legal System In Turmoil

#100

Post by Zigurd »

chris_wot wrote: post #93
Zigurd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How likely this went on as long as it did without the collaboration of prosecutors?

The DA resigned when it became known he regularly communicated with the chemist.

Has he been indicted? The overall impact here is enormous, on a scale like the "cash for kids" judge. He ought to be in prison.
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