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Drug Convictions Tossed
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Looks like more than 21,000 drug convictions in Massachusetts will be tossed because of crooked chemist.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/21000-drug-convictions-may-be-thrown-out-chemist-annie-dookhan-tampering/


Heard the story driving home, it took years to catch her, apparently co-workers reported her multiple times and nothing was done until a new supervisor took over. Got to figure the vast majority were probably guilty but now the burden will be on the prosecutors to prove their cases again without the drug data, so most will simply be dismissed.
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Re: Drug Convictions Tossed [ThisIsIt] [ In reply to ]
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i imagine lawyers will be trampling eachother in a race to file giant lawsuits.

who's smarter than you're? i'm!
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Re: Drug Convictions Tossed [ThisIsIt] [ In reply to ]
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ThisIsIt wrote:
Looks like more than 21,000 drug convictions in Massachusetts will be tossed because of crooked chemist.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/21000-drug-convictions-may-be-thrown-out-chemist-annie-dookhan-tampering/


Heard the story driving home, it took years to catch her, apparently co-workers reported her multiple times and nothing was done until a new supervisor took over. Got to figure the vast majority were probably guilty but now the burden will be on the prosecutors to prove their cases again without the drug data, so most will simply be dismissed.

Yup yup! This happened in my neck of the woods. Report I heard on the radio this morning said that only a few hundred of the cases are likely to be re-tried. Lot of lucky criminals out there.
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Re: Drug Convictions Tossed [wimsey] [ In reply to ]
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wimsey wrote:
ThisIsIt wrote:
Looks like more than 21,000 drug convictions in Massachusetts will be tossed because of crooked chemist.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/21000-drug-convictions-may-be-thrown-out-chemist-annie-dookhan-tampering/


Heard the story driving home, it took years to catch her, apparently co-workers reported her multiple times and nothing was done until a new supervisor took over. Got to figure the vast majority were probably guilty but now the burden will be on the prosecutors to prove their cases again without the drug data, so most will simply be dismissed.


Yup yup! This happened in my neck of the woods. Report I heard on the radio this morning said that only a few hundred of the cases are likely to be re-tried. Lot of lucky criminals out there.

I think the war of drugs is simply a huge waste in terms of resources across the board and that if we treated illicit drugs the same way we treat legal recreational drugs we'd be far better off (e.g. like in Portugal), but that being said...

The discussion on this was a bit ridiculous because it seemed to be predicated on the assumptions that all these convictions got people who were actually innocent of the charges. Doesn't seem to believable that more than a handful of the convictions didn't occur to people who were in fact guilty of what they were charged, unless there are a whole lot of folks out there running into the cops with mysterious substances resembling illicit drugs.
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Re: Drug Convictions Tossed [ThisIsIt] [ In reply to ]
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 Well, she did admit to "dry labbing", where she would put actual drugs in samples that otherwise had come up clean, so it sounds like there probably were some cases where the defendant may have actually been innocent. But in general yes, I agree that most of these people were not lily white, the case was much more about corruption of the integrity of process.

And then there was a case of a different Massachusetts state forensic lab tech around the same time, also involving many thousands of cases, where the tech admitted to being high while performing the tests and was getting some of her supply by raiding the evidence storage locker, so that would seem to indicate that many of the cases were dealing with actual illicit drugs since she was using them…
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Re: Drug Convictions Tossed [ThisIsIt] [ In reply to ]
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We are seeing more of this where I live in terms of cases being tossed because it is taking too long to bring them to trial. A few years ago a pathologist (Dr. Charles Smith) from Sick Kids hospital in Toronto was found to have done a really sloppy job on autopsies in child abuse cases. Mainly overcalls. Innocent people went to prison or lost their kids. Chilling stuff.

ThisIsIt wrote:
Looks like more than 21,000 drug convictions in Massachusetts will be tossed because of crooked chemist.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/21000-drug-convictions-may-be-thrown-out-chemist-annie-dookhan-tampering/


Heard the story driving home, it took years to catch her, apparently co-workers reported her multiple times and nothing was done until a new supervisor took over. Got to figure the vast majority were probably guilty but now the burden will be on the prosecutors to prove their cases again without the drug data, so most will simply be dismissed.

They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

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Re: Drug Convictions Tossed [wimsey] [ In reply to ]
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wimsey wrote:

And then there was a case of a different Massachusetts state forensic lab tech around the same time, also involving many thousands of cases, where the tech admitted to being high while performing the tests and was getting some of her supply by raiding the evidence storage locker, so that would seem to indicate that many of the cases were dealing with actual illicit drugs since she was using them…

The story I listened to said she was actually making drugs in the lab, talk about irony :)
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Re: Drug Convictions Tossed [len] [ In reply to ]
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len wrote:
We are seeing more of this where I live in terms of cases being tossed because it is taking too long to bring them to trial. A few years ago a pathologist (Dr. Charles Smith) from Sick Kids hospital in Toronto was found to have done a really sloppy job on autopsies in child abuse cases. Mainly overcalls. Innocent people went to prison or lost their kids. Chilling stuff.

That is horrifying. I can't imagine losing a child and then being imprisoned for his/her death when I hadn't done anything wrong. I hope they crucified the guy.
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Re: Drug Convictions Tossed [len] [ In reply to ]
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I found this on Wikipedia regarding the doctor. I can't begin to imagine the harm done to this family by an inept doctor.


Sherry Sherret


On the morning of January 23, 1996, Sherry Sherret found her four-month-old son Joshua lying in his bed not breathing.[7] He was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. Three and a half years later she was given the option to accept a plea of infanticide. She was convicted of infanticide without offering a defence (but offering no admission of guilt) in a plea (the delay was primarily attributable to Smith's unavailability to testify).


Sherret was jailed on the basis of Smith's opinion that her four-month-old son Joshua had a skull fracture, and that he had been smothered. She was released on bail in 1996 and remained on bail until the conviction. Sherret's sentence was 1 year in jail and 2 years probation. Sherret served eight months in total, and was entered into the child abuse registry.[7]


Her older child was removed by Children's Aid, and in order to get him out of foster care, she agreed to give him up for adoption and have no physical contact with him until he was 18.[7]


Later exhumation of the child and examination of the skull have shown that there was no skull fracture. It is thought Dr. Smith confused the normal gap between the baby's skull plates for an injury.[8] On Dec. 7, 2009, the Ontario Court of Appeal exonerated Sherret, stating that it was "profoundly regrettable that due to flaws in pathological evidence" she was wrongfully convicted.[9]
Last edited by: rick_pcfl: Apr 20, 17 13:18
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Re: Drug Convictions Tossed [ThisIsIt] [ In reply to ]
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I can't believe she only got three years.
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