Moves to Overturn MA Drug Convictions Have ‘Profound Implications’
Criminal Law Clinical Program Director David Rossman on decisions to wipe away drug convictions stemming from a scandal-plagued state drug-testing laboratory.

Moves to Overturn MA Drug Convictions Have ‘Profound Implications’
Criminal Law Clinical Program Director David Rossman on decisions to wipe away drug convictions stemming from a scandal-plagued state drug-testing laboratory.
Recent decisions by two Massachusetts district attorneys to overturn the drug convictions of thousands of people whose cases were based on testing at a now-defunct state laboratory where chemists stole drugs, falsified reports, and tampered with evidence are “basically unprecedented,” according to Boston University School of Law Criminal Law Clinical Program Director David Rossman.

The scandal dates back to 2003—when one of the chemists, Annie Dookhan, started at the lab—and ran through 2012 when the lab shut down after news of the misconduct emerged. Dookhan and another chemist, Sonja Farak, both pleaded guilty to the charges against them in the subsequent investigation (three drug lab prosecutors were also found to have committed misconduct in the aftermath of the scandal). Thousands of cases involving the lab have already been dismissed, but Suffolk County DA Rachael Rollins—recently nominated by President Biden to be US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts—and Middlesex County DA Marian T. Ryan this year decided to pursue a more systemic resolution, meaning individual defendants would not have to prove their cases were directly linked to the chemists’ misconduct.
“What the DAs’ offices have done is to acknowledge that the entire state apparatus for analyzing drugs has been cast into such disrepute that the state can’t stand by any of the analyses that were done,” Rossman says. “It’s a way to close the books on a very sad chapter in Massachusetts criminal justice history.”
For Rossman, the scandal “reinforced the concept that defense attorneys should not accept at face value representations that are made by the state.”
“We should force the state to show that the evidence that is going to be presented has the kind of integrity we need in order to base someone’s conviction upon,” he says.
Nevertheless, he says the moves by Rollins and Ryan to overturn the drug cases were “responsible decisions.”
“These are district attorneys who view themselves as ministers of justice rather than lawyers for the police,” he says.
Rossman sat down with The Record to discuss the prosecutors’ decisions and what they mean for the criminal justice system in Massachusetts. The following interview has been edited lightly for clarity and length.
Q&A
with David Rossman, director of the Criminal Law Clinical Program
The Record: Put the decisions to overturn thousands of drug convictions into context for us.
Rossman: This is basically unprecedented. There are approximately 80,000 people involved who will get their drug convictions wiped out because of the potential that exists for casting doubt on the legitimacy of the drug certification process that these laboratories conducted. This is being done without the need for any individual to establish that the analysts who were convicted of having falsified evidence actually were involved in analyzing the drugs in their case.
The Record: How will the BU Law Criminal Law Clinical Program’s Defender Clinic see the impact of this in its own work?
Rossman: When the original cases came down that allowed people on a case-by-case basis to petition for a review of their case, we went through all of the records we had in the clinical program and identified the individuals who possibly were involved and tried to locate them. But there weren’t very many we found who were eligible.
What we need to do now is find every single person we represented in the past [with a case tied to the lab]: I would suspect we’ll have about 250 people that we represented. The issue is going to be getting in touch with them and getting their approval to vacate their sentence. Since there’s no risk or cost to any of these people, I suspect that everybody we can find will agree to allow us to represent them in the process. The problem is going to be locating our former clients.
There are probably many, many, many more people who had convictions based on drugs that were analyzed at the lab in those eight years who are affected by the collateral consequences of the convictions even though they might not currently be serving a sentence: They may be subject to supervision; they may be disqualified from public housing; they may find it harder to get jobs.
The Record: What are the implications for the people whose convictions may be overturned?
Rossman: This will have profound, profound implications.
Some people might still be serving sentences based on these lab analyses; if that’s the case, those people will be able to get those sentences revoked and might be released.
There are probably many, many, many more people who had convictions based on drugs that were analyzed at the lab in those eight years who are affected by the collateral consequences of the convictions even though they might not currently be serving a sentence: They may be subject to supervision; they may be disqualified from public housing; they may find it harder to get jobs.
And there’s an additional category of people for whom this action by the DAs’ offices will be profound: People who have subsequently been convicted in either state or federal court and had their case treated as a much more serious matter—potentially subject to decades more imprisonment—because of these prior convictions. Those people will be able to get those convictions vacated and then return to the court that imposed the sentences they’re now serving and get those sentences reduced.
The Record: Do you expect other counties will follow suit?
Rossman: Some will; some won’t. There are some DAs who very vocally choose to set themselves apart from the model of prosecution that Rachael Rollins so publicly declares.
What will happen in other counties that don’t adopt this blanket resolution posture is individual defendants will have to establish that the certificate that attested to the identification of the drug in their case was in fact signed by Sonja Farak or Annie Dookhan.
The Record: How do you think Massachusetts can restore public faith in its criminal justice system after a scandal of this magnitude?
Rossman: This is a good first step, but I think that it should really be an invitation to rethink the way that we approach the problem of addiction. What we’ve done up to now by and large has been to treat addiction as a behavior that we can change by threatening harsher penalties. That’s what the criminal justice system is good at.
If we didn’t criminalize drugs, we wouldn’t need this lab; therefore, we wouldn’t have had the problem of corrupt analysis. But that’s a tiny piece of the problem. There’s an awful lot that cascades from the fact that we treat drugs the way we do in this country.