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 Department of Public Health Drug Abuse lab,[1] but was placed on administrative leave and subsequently quit after admitting to falsifying evidence affecting up to 34,000 cases.
[4] Dookhan attended Regis College for two years before earning a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry from the University of Massachusetts Boston in 2001.
[5] 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.
[8] 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.
[9] Additionally, Dookhan's productivity remained steady after the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts that chemists who perform drug tests in criminal cases can be subpoenaed to testify in person.
[18][19] 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.
[22] Dookhan's story was the subject of a Netflix series, How to Fix a Drug Scandal created by Erin Lee Carr that was released April 1, 2020.
How to Fix a Drug Scandal depicts the role of former Attorney General of Massachusetts Martha Coakley, who was accused of political cover up.