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Dookhan was sentenced to prison in 2013 while Farak was convicted of tampering drug evidence in an Amherst, Massachusetts, state crime lab. Farak was not specifically charged with tampering evidence at Hinton.
The initiative will only focus on convictions for controlled substances, and will not extend to other charges in the same cases, the DA’s office said.
Chemists at Hinton had analyzed and certified nearly 83,000 samples from Suffolk County during those nine years, according to the DA’s office. While more than 7,800 of those cases were vacated, the initiative will review the approximately 74,800 remaining certifications, it said.
“Since one certification can be used for multiple defendants or one defendant can have multiple certifications, the precise number of defendants is still to be determined,” the DA’s office explained in a press release.
After sentences are vacated, Rollins said her office will move to expunge convictions and review cases where a Hinton Lab certification led to increased sentencing for other subsequent state or federal cases.
“After years of litigation, this is an important step toward restoring trust and faith in the criminal legal system. By working together with our courtroom partners, today we no longer rely on potentially falsified or fabricated evidence, and finally declare what we should have over a decade ago, that the abject and systemic mismanagement of the Hinton Lab has rendered anything produced there inherently suspect,” Rollins said in a statement.
The Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services’ chief counsel Anthony Benedetti praised Rollin’s decision, saying it “shows the compassion and leadership that the criminal legal system sorely needs.”
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