The documents released Thursday indicated employee misconduct at the defunct Hinton Drug Lab went beyond the actions of disgraced chemist Annie Dookhan — and was more widespread than state officials previously acknowledged.
Newly released court documents suggest the largest drug lab scandal in U.S. history may grow even larger.
Since the Hinton scandal erupted in 2012, state officials maintained Dookhan was responsible for falsifying tests at the drug lab. She was convicted of misconduct in 2013. A year later, former state Inspector General Glenn Cunha released the results of his investigation and concluded that Dookhan, who began working at Hinton in 2003, was the"sole bad actor" at the lab.
The documents showed the workers were referred to the attorney general’s office for potential charges several years ago, but those referrals were not made public until Middlesex Superior Court Judge Patrick Haggan last week released a broad collection of impounded documents related to the reviews of the lab by the Office of the Inspector General.
The new court documents contain email records of staffers in the inspector general’s office who raised questions other Hinton employees. "You kind of trust the idea that the government is telling the truth, but they're not — and they just didn't," said defense attorney James McKenna, who represents one of the four defendants challenging their drug convictions."We're defense counsel, and our job is to get rid of our clients' convictions. We shouldn't be doing this."
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court already has ordered tens of thousands of criminal convictions be vacated because of the Hinton scandal and another state drug lab scandal. In 2014, former Amherst chemist Sonja Farak was convicted of using some of the drugs she was supposed to test for evidence. Farak worked at the Hinton Lab before she worked in Amherst.
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