UPDATED: 5:00 pm.

It’s been three years since investigators first discovered state lab chemist Annie Dookhan’s mishandling of evidence. Dookhan eventually pleaded guilty to misleading investigators, filing false reports, and tampering with evidence in thousands of cases.

Monday the state’s top court took steps that it says will ensure defendants convicted with evidence Dookhan handled will feel free to request a re-trial. 

It’s estimated Dookhan potentially tainted as many as 40-thousand cases. But years later, only a tiny fraction of the defendants in those cases actually KNOW Dookhan was involved in their convictions. And Matthew Segal of the ACLU of Massachusetts says even they have been afraid to come forward.

“For many years, many of Annie Dookhan’s victims have worried that challenging their convictions can subject them to even harsher convictions and sentences.”

So the Supreme Judicial Court has decided to eliminate that worry. It granted the ACLU’s request and ruled that the so-called Dookhan defendants who ask to be tried again can not be charged with more serious crimes or given more severe sentences than they originally received.

“This decision today is really monumental because it’s going to clear the path for many defendants – thousands, potentially tens of thousands – to pursue relief. And that’s great, but it will raise questions about how easily that kind of volume can be dealt with.”

The Suffolk District Attorney’s office argued against the ACLU’s request. DA spokesman Jake Wark says, with its ruling, the high court is tying district attorneys’ hands.

“Convicted defendants now have nothing to lose and everything to gain” by withdrawing earlier admissions of guilt, says Wark.

Wark did praise the SJC for rejecting a so-called “global remedy” – essentially, throwing out all convictions based on evidence Dookhan handled. The SJC also said “no” to imposing deadlines for re-trials of Dookhan defendants.

Attorney Benjamin H. Keehn says those options didn’t get to the heart of the matter anyway. He’s with the state Committee for Public Counsel Services, which oversees public defenders.


“No remedy, whether it was global or case by case, was going to be feasible unless the court took seriously our concerns that we need the active participation and cooperation of the district attorneys in the eight affected counties to get to square one.”

“Square one,” for Keehn, is notifying all the defendents convicted with evidence Dookhan handled. That hasn’t happened yet. The justices declined to force district attorneys to sort through their records to identify Dookhan defendants. Instead the SJC in its decision, quote “encourages” district attorneys to help. Keehn wishes the SJC had said something stronger, but

“I do think this will help us persuade district attorneys to do the right thing.”

And public defenders have more pressing things to think about. They’re preparing for a rush of retrial requests.

“There’s going to be an unknown but significant number of individuals coming forward now who did not have any interest in doing so previously.” 


That, Keehn says, means a massive amount of work ahead for all members of the court.

Read The Decision

http://www.mass.gov/courts/docs/sjc/reporter-of-decisions/new-opinions/11764.pdf

Full statement by Suffolk County DA spokesman Jake Wark:

“Its name notwithstanding, the so-called ‘global remedy’ would have exacerbated, rather than cured, the crisis caused by Annie Dookhan.  The SJC was wise to reject it.  Unfortunately, however, the high court imposed what may amount to the same thing by substituting the Commonwealth’s statutory charging authority with their own.  These convicted defendants now have nothing to lose and everything to gain by withdrawing their evidence-based admissions of guilt.  

“What Annie Dookhan did was an affront to the criminal justice system, but considering that prosecutors have borne the vast majority of the procedural burden in these cases, this seems a lopsided course of action.  It provides defendants who unequivocally admitted their guilt the ‘second bite at the proverbial apple’ that the high court was so careful to withhold from the Commonwealth.”