Annie Dookhan of Franklin has a change-of-plea
hearing scheduled for Friday in Suffolk Superior Court. She
initially pleaded not guilty to a total of 27 charges.
State police shut down the state Department of Public Health lab
she worked at after discovering the extent of Dookhan's alleged
misconduct.
Prosecutors said Dookhan admitted "dry labbing," or testing only
a fraction of a batch of samples, then listing them all as
positive for illegal drugs, to "improve her productivity and
burnish her reputation."
Since the lab closed in August 2012, at least 1,100 criminal
cases have been dismissed or not prosecuted because of tainted
evidence or other fallout from the lab's closing.
Prosecutors from state Attorney General Martha Coakley's office
recommended a sentence of up to seven years in prison, while
Dookhan's lawyer recommended a sentence of no more than a year.
Judge Carol Ball said in a written memo that she would impose a
sentence of no more than three to five years if Dookhan decided
to change her plea to guilty.
Dookhan's lawyer, Nicolas Gordon, argued that she made a series
of tragic mistakes and that her only motivation was to be "the
hardest-working and most prolific and most productive chemist."
"This is not a woman who ever set out to hurt anyone," Gordon
argued during a court hearing last month.
Prosecutors, however, said Dookhan's actions had caused
"egregious damage" to the criminal justice system and cost the
state millions of dollars to assess the damage and mitigate the
effect on thousands of people charged with drug offenses during
the nine years Dookhan worked at the lab. The court system has
been flooded with motions for new trials filed by defendants in
drug cases.
[Associated
Press]
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