Hundreds of those convicted have been set free already while potentially thousands more seek to end the nightmare, but fear attempting to doing so will result in a worse sentence.
ACLU lawyer Matthew Segal said many ‘‘Dookhan defendants’’ are afraid of asking a judge to vacate their guilty pleas in order to seek a new trial because under state law, they can be prosecuted for crimes that had been dropped when they entered their original plea deal.“They are afraid, and with good reason,” said Segal, the legal director for the ACLU of Massachusetts.
The ACLU estimates that over 40,000 convictions are linked with the drug lab scandal. Other estimates range from 20,000 to 60,000.
But prosecutors suggested that the number that would ultimately seek to have their convictions overturned is much lower.
Source: bostonglobe.com
Dookhan was on very close terms with Massachusetts prosecuters, who praised her efforts that bolstered their careers at the expense of people who lost everything from careers to families by being wrongfully locked away for years in a jail cell.
Dookhan used her position to forge results for nearly a decade. ”I don’t think anyone ever perceived that one person was capable of causing this much chaos,” said Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey.
“You can see the entire walls full of boxes… in one of these cardboard boxes, there could be hundreds of cases … in each box,” said Morrissey.
Hundreds of defendants and “convicts” had been arguing that they were framed and claiming that the evidence used to convict them was mishandled. They were right.
In one recent case, a man was charged with “selling cocaine and heroin.” His public defender, Julieann Hernon, believes that this man was a potential victim of Dookhan’s fake evidence and ought to be released.
“[Dookhan] was mis-testing evidence, dry-labbing evidence, saying she had ‘conducted tests’ when she had not, deliberately tainting drugs,” said Hernon.
“Certainly, I think, we have to presume a taint here when Annie Dookhan was the chemist in the case,” said Hernon.
In another recent case, defense attorney William Sullivan was able to successfully reverse his client’s prior “guilt” because Dookhan was the secondary chemist involved in the conviction.
“This is a lab that was pretty much wholly and fully contaminated by Ms. Annie Dookhan,”Sullivan told the judge. “She had full access to everyone’s drugs.”
While many have been set free, they will never get the lost years of their lives back.
“The tragedy is that my client already did four years on this,” said Sullivan. “I mean, that is disturbing in itself.”
our justice system is nothing but a scam and a cash cow, when will people wake up in this country or have they been dumb down to the point of no return,.
Whaaaaaaat ?
Again, ACLU trash.
You never thought one person could be capable of this much? How about the treason, debt and injustice Obama has done?