New England Public Radio

Massachusetts Drug Labs Vastly Improved, Officials Say

Defense attorneys in Massachusetts are still waiting to find out how the fiascos at state drug labs over the last few years will affect thousands of criminal cases. Going forward, state officials say the drug labs are in much better shape, but not everyone is a hundred percent convinced.

In 2012, chemist Annie Dookhan was arrested for making up evidence at a state crime lab in Jamaica Plain — one of two, run by the Department of Public Health, that tested suspected illegal drugs seized by police.

In response, the Massachusetts State Police took over the labs. The following year, another chemist, Sonja Farak, was arrested at a second lab in Amherst for consuming drug samples she was supposed to test — for years.

“I have thirty years in law enforcement, and I’m not surprised by a lot of things,” says Robert Irwin of the Massachusetts State Police, who was on the team that investigated both cases. “But I will say, the amount of damage that one person can do to the criminal justice system, it was terrible.”

In May, the Massachusetts Attorney General released a report detailing the extent of Farak’s drug abuse. It found she was intoxicated almost continuously on the job and while testifying against drug defendants. It also described the lax and haphazard security, supervision and quality control at the Amherst forensic lab, which is now closed.

Today, the only two state drug labs are in Sudbury and Springfield. Attorney General Maura Healey told WGBH she’s not worried about their integrity.

“[The lab] is now both nationally accredited and internationally accredited, and we feel confident that the right systems and personnel are in place,” Healey said.

Since the state police took over, the budget for all forensic labs across Massachusetts has increased by $5 million, or about 25 percent.

State crime lab director Kristen Sullivan says the drug-testing staff has doubled to 23, including some in training. She says drugs are now locked up in a central storage bin whenever chemists are not testing them, there are video cameras keeping watch and security is stringent.

“Analysts may not work in the lab alone. They must be accompanied by another analyst or a supervisor,” says Sullivan. “That’s something we have changed in the last couple years.”

Northampton defense attorney Luke Ryan represented clients whose cases were affected by the lab work now in question. He says he believes the state police are putting more resources into drug testing, but says it would be “professionally negligent” to assume all problems are fixed.

“After the Annie Dookhan scandal broke, they had legislative hearings, they brought in people to testify,” Ryan says. “And all of these people expressed confidence that something like this could never happen again, that somebody engaged in this misconduct could never do this in any sort of long-term way.”

But then they learned Sonja Farak was stealing drugs and working while high.

“So I think we all have reason, particularly those of us who work defending people accused of drug crimes, to be skeptical about the quality of the forensic work that’s being done,” Ryan says.

Ryan says next time he’s defending someone on drug charges, he plans to grill the state chemists who give testimony on whether a seized substance is in fact an illegal drug. For instance, are they running a neutral substance — a blank — through their equipment to clean it off between tests?

“Or are they doing what they did in Amherst where they’ll run a standard and then a blank and then thirty samples in a row where you’re introducing this high likelihood of carryover?” Ryan says. “I mean, those are the kinds of practices that we now know are dangerous in terms of labs producing reliable results.”

Lab director Kristen Sullivan says the police-run facilities are meticulous with samples, including what are called “official standards.” Those are pure drug samples, bought from a factory, so that chemists can compare them to substances seized by police.

In Amherst, investigators found that not only did Sonja Farak consume those standards in large quantity, but the lab didn’t have the budget to keep a robust supply on hand. So staff would sometimes make their own standards by skimming off police evidence.

“That does not happen,” Sullivan says. “We do have things in place that would prevent that. All our standards are purchased, they’re inventoried and access to these are limited and monitored.”

Sullivan says she’s now pushing for an expanded drug-screening policy. Employees already have to prove they’re clean before they’re hired. Officials are now negotiating with the union; they want the right to test employees randomly or for cause.

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated the incorrect location of the Hinton State Laboratory.

 

Mass. IG: Dookhan ‘Sole Bad Actor’ In Drug Lab Scandal, But Others Still Failed

An investigation by the Massachusetts Inspector General found that chemist Annie Dookhan was the “sole bad actor” in a scandal at the now-shuttered Hinton state drug lab. But the IG said management failures at the lab helped Dookhan get away with faking test results.

Annie Dookhan is in state prison. The lab is now closed and thousands of defendants have asked for their criminal cases to be reopened.

State Inspector Genereal Glen Cunha says the lab was plagued by management failures, inadequate training and a lack of protocols.

“Other chemists in the lab repeatedly complained to superiors about Dookhan,” Cunha said. “Those complaints fell on deaf ears. The supervisors in the lab told the chemists that miss Dookhan’s actions were not the chemists concerns.”

But Cunha concluded that Dookhan acted alone.

“My team found no indication that any other drug lab employee was tampering with test results,” he said.

The ACLU and the Massachusetts Bar Association have said there’s reason to doubt all the cases that came out of the Hinton state drug lab.

But the IG report concluded that only those cases in which Annie Dookhan performed the primary drug tests should be treated as suspect. There are more than 40,000 of them.

MA Defense Attorneys Astonished by New Evidence in Drug Lab Scandal

Some Massachusetts defense attorneys say they’re astonished by the latest evidence from the state drug lab scandal.

State Police investigators reviewing operations at the now-closed Hinton Drug Lab in Jamaica Plain have found photos indicating that the lab was in disarray.

In hundreds of photos from investigators, drug samples are shown stored all over the Hinton lab: in drawers, cabinets, even in manila folders inside file cabinets.

Anne Goldbach is forensic services director for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the state agency that handles legal representation for poor people, many of whom have cases connected to the drug lab scandal. In an interview, Goldbach pointed to a photo of an apparent drug sample in a plastic bag taped inside a desk cabinet. Written in marker is the description “found by garbage can.”

“This doesn’t surprise me based on everything else that I’ve read about what was going on at that lab,” she said. “But it certainly is demonstrative evidence that there were very lax standards at the lab.”

The photos are part of the state inspector general’s investigation of the lab after former chemist Annie Dookhan was charged with falsifying drug tests and potentially compromising tens of thousands of criminal cases.

To Goldbach, the photos indicate that the problem is larger than Dookhan.

“Certainly it’s not just a situation of one rogue chemist,” she said. “If anything you had people looking away. You had lack of supervision. You had a lack of standards.”

A spokesperson for the inspector general said the photos are “evidence that we are doing a very meticulous and thorough investigation.”

With that investigation not expected to be finished for months, though, district attorneys say they are preparing now for how to handle the cases where Dookhan tested the evidence.

“We think we’ve been provided enough information to make our own conclusions about the entirety of the situation,” Middlesex District Attorney Gerard Leone said. “Not just Annie Dookhan, but what we’re seeing is an indictment of that lab in Jamaica Plain.”

Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey doesn’t go quite that far, but he does say his office is reviewing all cases where Dookhan was involved, and he admits that most of the cases probably will be dismissed.

“They’re very hard to save,” Morrissey said. “We’re looking to see if there are admissions or things that may affect the case but they become increasingly much harder not to dismiss.”

Across the state slightly more than 300 people have been released from custody because their charges were based on drugs tested by Dookhan. Fewer than two dozen of them have been rearrested.

Goldbach, with the state’s public defender agency, believes prosecutors should dismiss every case where Dookhan was involved.

“If they cannot prove these cases beyond a reasonable doubt because they have faulty evidence, then it is their job to dismiss these cases,” she said. “That is what’s just. That is what’s fair.”

But a broad solution on how to deal with Dookhan-related cases is not expected any time soon. The state Supreme Judicial Court is expected to rule next month on some questions regarding legal procedure. But SJC Justice Margot Botsford says it’s too early to determine whether there is one standard for all of the estimated 34,000 cases affected by the scandal.