Last year, Annie Dookhan, a former chemist at a Massachusetts drug lab, was arrested for mishandling and falsifying thousands of tests--and in the process, throwing as many as 40,000 cases into doubt. Earlier today, Dookhan pleaded guilty to all 27 counts against her and was sentenced to three to five years in prison.
“You plead guilty here because you are guilty?” Judge Carol S. Ball said as she explained the rights Dookhan was giving up because of her guilty plea.
“Yes, Your Honor,” Dookhan said meekly.
Dookhan’s falsification of drug tests, in an attempt to look like a highly productive employee, prompted the release of hundreds of convicts, raised questions about thousands of cases, and forced the state to spend millions to address the problems.
Ball, who found that Dookhan had entered her plea “freely, willingly, and voluntarily,” also sentenced Dookhan to two years of probation.
Dookhan pleaded guilty to
obstructing justice, tampering with evidence, perjury and falsifying academic records. In addition to falsifying tests, she testified on numerous occasions that she had a master's degree in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts at Boston when she actually didn't have one.
According to a timeline of the case from WBUR in Boston, it started in June 2011, when it was discovered that she'd tested 90 samples without properly signing them out. An investigation revealed she'd forged the initials of an evidence officer, and she was suspended from lab duties. However, no DAs were notified until February 2012, when she was placed on administrative leave. Incredibly, she was still allowed to testify in cases during that time. She resigned in March 2012. The state police took over the state's drug labs in July and launched a more exhaustive probe. Two months later, Dookhan was arrested after admitting to altering or faking results in order to cover up her rampant "dry labbing," or visually identifying substances without testing them. She went as far as to add cocaine and other substances to samples that didn't have any present at all.
However, it turns out that her coworkers had gotten suspicious of her earlier. She tested over 500 samples per month, five times the average--even though some coworkers claimed they never saw her near a microscope. Further investigation revealed that the pace of her testing actually ramped up after a 2010 SCOTUS ruling that chemists who perform drug tests in criminal cases can be called to testify in person. It turns out Dookhan was the only chemist whose testing volume didn't go down after that ruling came down.
The fallout from this case is just staggering. Dookhan's lab was shut down in August 2012. Some 600 people have had their convictions either overturned or temporarily set aside because they were convicted based on evidence Dookhan provided. An assistant DA in Norfolk County was forced to resign after it emerged he and Dookhan carried on long-running--and highly unauthorized--email correspondence about the drug tests for his cases. The state has spent $8.5 million to deal with the fallout, and the General Court has appropriated $8.6 million more.
Seen in this light, defense attorneys' proposal for one year in jail sounds almost laughable. Although sentencing guidelines called for only a maximum of three years, Ball ruled--rightly--that upward departure was called for because of consequences that were "nothing short of catastrophic" and caused the integrity of the system to be "shaken to the core." The maximum sentence of five years is about what I thought was appropriate for this case--and hopefully, she'll have to serve every day of it.