Annie Dookhan state drug lab scandal

Annie Dookhan, the former state chemist who has sparked a scandal that may undo thousands of drug convictions in Massachusetts, was arrested at her Lincoln home by State Police. Dookhan is accused of faking drug results, forging signatures, and mixing samples at a State Police lab. State Police say Dookhan tested more than 60,000 drug samples involving 34,000 defendants during her nine years at the lab.

PDF of police report

Dookhan’s husband watched as Dookhan was escorted to a cruiser outside her home. Defense lawyers and prosecutors are scrambling to figure out how to deal with the fallout. Already, at least 20 drug defendants have been freed, had their bail reduced, or had their sentences suspended because the evidence in their cases was analyzed by Dookhan. Special courts are being established to handle the wave of criminal cases that could be reopened by Dookhan’s transgressions at the Jamaica Plain laboratory.

The former state chemist at the heart of the state drug lab scandal admitted to investigators that she improperly removed evidence from storage, forged colleagues’ signatures, and didn’t perform proper tests on drugs for “two or three years,’’ according to the police report. When troopers suggested Dookhan should speak to her husband about getting a lawyer, Dookhan said that she was going through serious marital problems and had no money to hire one.

Dookhan: “I messed up bad.’’

Dookhan’s colleagues had concerns about her unusually large caseload and lab habits and raised them with supervisors. But the supervisors took little action even when they learned that she had forged other chemists’ initials on some drug samples.

Timeline of scandal events

Dookhan’s husband talked to a trooper after her arrest on Sept. 28.

State lab chemist Annie Dookham left her Franklin home in her SUV on Sept. 27.

One eyebrow-raising part of this story is that Annie Dookhan lied on her resume about having a master’s degree in chemistry.