Annie Dookhan (born 1977) is an American chemist who was convicted of felony obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, and other crimes relating to mass falsification of lab results. At the time of her crimes, she worked at the

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

Department of Public Health Drug Abuse lab, but was placed on administrative leave and subsequently quit after admitting to falsifying evidence affecting up to 34,000 cases.

Early life and education

Annie Dookhan was born Annie Sadiyya Khan into an Indo-Trinidadian family in San Fernando,

Trinidad and Tobago Trinidad and Tobago, officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean, comprising the main islands of Trinidad and Tobago, along with several List of islands of Trinidad and Tobago, smaller i ...

in 1977. She moved to the United States when she was a child and eventually became a citizen. Dookhan attended Regis College for two years before earning a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry from the

University of Massachusetts Boston The University of Massachusetts Boston (stylized as UMass Boston) is a Public university, public US-based research university. It is the only public research university in Boston and the third-largest campus in the five-campus University of Ma ...

in 2001. In 2010, a coworker found that Dookhan was claiming on her resume that she had earned a master's degree from the

University of Massachusetts The University of Massachusetts is the Public university, public university system of the Massachusetts, Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The university system includes six campuses (Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, University of Massachusetts Lowell ...

. During her time working at the Hinton State Laboratory Institute, Dookhan also claimed to be attending night classes as part of a PhD program at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

Career

In 2003, Dookhan was hired as a chemist at the Hinton State Laboratory Institute in the

Jamaica Plain Jamaica Plain is a Neighborhoods in Boston, neighborhood of in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Settled by Puritans seeking farmland to the south, it was originally part of Roxbury, Massachusetts, Roxbury. The community seceded from Roxbur ...

neighborhood of

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

.Timeline of case
from WBUR in Boston

Evidence falsification

In June 2011, an evidence officer at the lab discovered that Dookhan had tested 95 samples without properly signing them out. Further investigation revealed that she had forged the initials of an evidence officer in her log book, and she was suspended from lab duties. However, she was still allowed to continue testifying in court until February 2012, when district attorneys throughout the Boston area were notified of the breach in protocol and Dookhan was placed on administrative leave. She resigned in March 2012. During Dookhan's time at the Hinton lab, it had been run by the Massachusetts Department of Health's Office of Human Services. However, in a cost-cutting move, the

Massachusetts General Court The Massachusetts General Court, formally the General Court of Massachusetts, is the State legislature (United States), state legislature of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts located in the state capital of Boston. Th ...

transferred control of the lab to the

Massachusetts State Police The Massachusetts State Police (MSP) is an agency of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, responsible for law enforcement and vehicle regulation across the state. As of 2024, it has 2,500 sworn troop ...

forensics unit in 2011. The state police mounted a probe into the Dookhan case. The probe revealed that Dookhan's superiors had ignored red flags surrounding her before 2011. For instance, she reportedly tested over 500 samples per month—five times the normal average—even though her supervisors and colleagues claimed to have never seen her in front of a microscope, and that she frequently misidentified samples. Additionally, Dookhan's productivity remained steady after the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...

ruled in '' Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts'' that chemists who perform drug tests in criminal cases can be subpoenaed to testify in person. According to an independent data analysis by WBUR, Dookhan's turnaround time for tests actually dropped from 2009 to 2011. The problem was severe enough that

Governor A governor is an politician, administrative leader and head of a polity or Region#Political regions, political region, in some cases, such as governor-general, governors-general, as the head of a state's official representative. Depending on the ...

Deval Patrick Deval Laurdine Patrick (born July 31, 1956) is an American politician who served as the 71st governor of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2015. He was the first African Americans, African-American Governor of Massachusetts and the first Democratic Pa ...

ordered the lab shut down. In August, police interviewed Dookhan at her home in

Franklin Franklin may refer to: People and characters * Franklin (given name), including list of people and characters with the name * Franklin (surname), including list of people and characters with the name * Franklin (class), a member of a historic ...

, where she admitted to altering and faking test results in order to cover up her frequent "dry labbing", or visually identifying samples without actually testing them. She even went as far as to add cocaine to samples in which no cocaine was present. She said she had been dry-labbing for as long as three years. At one point, she broke down, saying, "I messed up, I messed up bad. I don't want the lab to get in trouble."

Charges

On September 28, 2012, Dookhan was arrested and charged with

obstruction of justice In United States jurisdictions, obstruction of justice refers to a number of offenses that involve unduly influencing, impeding, or otherwise interfering with the justice system, especially the legal and procedural tasks of prosecutors, investiga ...

and falsification of academic records. The latter charge came because she had claimed both on her resume and in sworn testimony to have had a master's degree in chemistry from the

. However, school officials revealed that Dookhan had no such degree, and had never taken master's level classes there. On December 17, Dookhan was formally arraigned on 27 charges—17 counts of obstruction of justice, eight counts of tampering with evidence and one count each of perjury and falsification of records. Prosecutors alleged that whenever a second test failed to confirm the initial results, Dookhan would tamper with the vials to make them consistent with the inaccurate results obtained by her dry labbing. She was also charged with falsely certifying results that she knew to be compromised; these certifications were admitted as evidence in court.

Imprisonment

On November 22, 2013, Dookhan was sentenced to three to five years of imprisonment and two years of probation by Judge Carol S. Ball in Suffolk Superior Court, after pleading guilty to crimes relating to falsifying drug tests. This was greater than the one-year sentence her defense requested, but less than the five to seven-year sentence requested by the prosecution. However, Ball said that upward departure was merited due to the ramifications of Dookhan's misconduct. Ball wrote, "Innocent persons were incarcerated, guilty persons have been released to further endanger the public, millions and millions of public dollars are being expended to deal with the chaos Ms. Dookhan created, and the integrity of the criminal justice system has been shaken to the core." Dookhan,

Massachusetts Department of Correction The Massachusetts Department of Correction is the government agency responsible for operating the prison system of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The Massachusetts Department of Correction is responsible for the custody ...

inmate F81328, served her sentence at Massachusetts Correctional Institution – Framingham. By April 2016, she had been granted parole and was subsequently released from prison.

Impact

In January 2015, Benjamin Keehn, a prominent defense attorney with the Committee for Public Counsel Services, said that as many as 40,000 people could have been falsely convicted as a result of Dookhan's actions. In May 2015, the

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Although the claim is disputed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the SJC claims the distinction of being the oldest continuously fu ...

ruled that defendants whose convictions on drug charges were based on evidence potentially tainted by Dookhan could pursue retrials without having to face more charges or tougher sentences. However, they would need a retrial to be released. On April 18, 2017, Massachusetts dropped more than 21,000 low-level drug criminal charges involving Dookhan. Out of the 15,570 cases in which she was involved, only 117 were to be pursued, according to Daniel Conley, the district attorney in Suffolk County, which includes Boston. Other counties followed suit, taking direction from the state Supreme Court to select a small fraction of cases for re-prosecution. Dookhan's story was the subject of a

Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...

series, '' How to Fix a Drug Scandal'' created by

Erin Lee Carr Erin Lee Carr (born April 15, 1988) is an American documentary film director and producer. She is also an author for publications including ''VICE'' and her memoir called ''All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir'', a story about love, addiction, an ...

that was released April 1, 2020. The four-part documentary focuses on Dookhan and an independent case of fraud in a different drug lab by Sonja Farak. ''How to Fix a Drug Scandal'' depicts the role of former

Attorney General In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general (: attorneys general) or attorney-general (AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have executive responsibility for law enf ...

Martha Coakley Martha Mary Coakley (born July 14, 1953) is an American lobbyist, lawyer, and former politician who served as Attorney General of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2015. She is most notable for having lost a race for the United States Senate in what was ...

, who was accused of political cover up.

Personal life

Dookhan married Surrendranath Dookhan, a software engineer, in 2004. They have one son, Branden Dookhan.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dookhan, Annie 1977 births 21st-century American criminals 21st-century American chemists Drug control law in the United States Massachusetts government officials convicted of crimes Date of birth missing (living people) Living people People from Boston People from San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago Trinidad and Tobago emigrants to the United States Scientists from Massachusetts Criminals from Massachusetts American women chemists 21st-century American women scientists People involved in scientific misconduct incidents American female criminals American people convicted of obstruction of justice American people convicted of perjury American prisoners and detainees Prisoners and detainees of Massachusetts Evidence tampering Toxicology fraud