>The corn is ripe for harves
>Javan Tooley
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, )
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v. ) Criminal No. 10-10157-DJC
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JAVAN TOOLEY, )
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Defendant. )
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MEMORANDUM AND ORDER
CASPER, J. February 11, 2015
I. Introduction
DefendantJavan Tooley (“Tooley”) has filed a motion to vacate his guilty plea pursuant
to 28 U.S.C. § 2255. D. 27. Tooley contends his guilty plea was not knowing, voluntary and
intelligent and thus in violation of his due process rights, because he entered the plea while
unaware of Annie Dookhan’s misconductat theHinton Drug Lab. Id. For the reasons stated
below, the Court DENIES Tooley’s motion to vacate.
II. Standard
A petitioner may seek post conviction relief under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 if his “sentence (1)
was imposed in violation of the Constitution, or (2) was imposed by a court that lacked
jurisdiction, or (3) exceeded the statutory maximum, or (4) was otherwise subject to collateral
attack.” David v. United States, 134 F.3d 470, 474 (1st Cir. 1998). It is the petitioner’s burden
to make out a claim for § 2255 relief. Id
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 theMassachusetts Department of Public Health Drug Abuse lab,[1] but was placed on administrative leave and subsequently quit afteradmitting to falsifying evidence affecting up to 34,000 cases.
>Annie Dookhan’s misconductat theHinton Drug Lab
Career
In 2003, Dookhan was hired as a chemist at the Hinton State Laboratory Institute in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston.[7]
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.[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. She resigned in March 2012.[7]
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, theMassachusetts General Court transferred control of the lab to the Massachusetts__ State Police__ forensics unit in 2011.The state police mounted a probe into the Dookhan case.[7] 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.[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. According to an independent data analysis by WBUR, Dookhan's turnaround time for tests actually dropped from 2009 to 2011.[10] The problem was severe enough that Governor Deval Patrick ordered the lab shut down.[11]
In August, police interviewed Dookhan at her home in Franklin, 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.[8] 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.