More than two years after state lab chemist Annie Dookhan pleaded guilty to misleading investigators, filing false reports, and tampering with evidence, the state’s highest court heard arguments thursday about whether people convicted with evidence Dookhan handled are getting a fair chance at having their cases retried.
Attorneys for the state’s public defenders told justices they still don’t know how many people may have been wrongfully convicted because of mishandled evidence by Dookhan.
Benjamin Keene of the Committee for Public Counsel Services said many Massachusetts district attorney's offices haven’t provided enough information to draw up a complete list of so called “Dookhan defendants.”
"We’re two-and-half years out from this and we are virtually no closer than we were when the scandal broke to actually being able to provide relief for all of those who have had their rights violated,” Keene said.
But Essex County Assistant District attorney Quentin Weld told the justices his office has worked hard to identify 17,000 Dookhan defendants.
"The fact of the matter is the procedures already in place are sufficient to meet the needs of people bringing such claims,” Weld said.
Justice Margot Botsford pointed out six other district attorney's offices haven’t come up with such a list of Dookhan defendants. And she said, on their own, there’s no way for many defendants to know that their evidence was handled by Annie Dookhan.
"There’s a lot of people out there who would have no idea that there are superior court judges who are sitting there waiting to hear their cases," Botsford said. "I mean, they wouldn’t know that they had a case.”
Weld responded that district attorneys aren’t obligated to notify defendants their cases involved Dookhan. And he said district attorneys aren’t the only ones who hold the information necessary to identify Dookhan defendants.
"It was our position that it was not uniquely available to the district attorneys,” he said.
“Well, and why would that be?” Botsford asked him.
“Because docket numbers and case information are possessed by both sides of a given criminal case.”
Attorneys for the ACLU of Massachusetts told the court that even when people know they’re Dookhan defendants, they’re afraid to request a retrial. ACLU legal director Matthew Segal said prosecutors have told defendants they could be found guilty again and be sentenced to additional time in prison.
"These people were all sentenced, the vast majority of them have served out those sentences, and we think the punishment has to stop there,” Segal said.
Now the fate of the Dookhan defendants is in the hands of the Supreme Judicial Court, but it’s not known when justices will render a decision.
