6 ms·

34000 tainted cases is not "messed up big time". It's deliberate and malicious. And she gets 3-5 years? Bullshit.

by vsviridov 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- matthewmacleod 13y ago
  What's the justification for that? What qualifies you to pass such a sentence, and what makes the sentence the justice system settled on inappropriate?
  - njharman 13y ago
    The extreme magnitude of the impact of her crime. Injuring 34,000 victims. "Breaking" the justice system. Abuse of the extraordinary power society placed in her.
  - dreamdu5t 13y ago
    How about serving the sentences she was responsible for? Even if she served 1 day for every sentence that was a result of her intentional tampering of the evidence, she would be serving life.
    - stdbrouw 13y ago
      Justice is about more than retribution.
      - Crito 13y ago
        There is more to consider than merely justice. We also have to protect society from her. How could she ever possibly be trusted again to anything? Hell, I wouldn't even trust her to bag my groceries. She lied about her background once, and harmed thousands of people. Who is to say that in 20 years she won't be found under another name, in another state, running this or another scam again? If our system was set up to rehabilitate, that would be great, but it isn't. As long as she remains un-rehabilitated, she should be kept locked up. Not out of some sense of justice or for retribution, but simply to keep her from harming others again.
      - dreamdu5t 13y ago
        You're right, it's also about deterrence, incapacitation, and reparation to the victim, in addition to punishment.
    - veemjeem 13y ago
      I feel like there must be others who share the responsibility. There's no way a single chemist could be the source of 34,000 convictions. Since they found a second chemist tainting the results at the lab, I'm guessing the entire prosecution system is corrupted.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
Estragon 13y ago
I volunteer with a nonviolent communication program at a local prison, and I would guess that sentence would completely shatter her, at least if she was male. Every fellow inmate will identify with her victims and in a male prison they would be vengeful. Not sure how it will work out in a female prison.
- vsviridov 13y ago
  Probably. But that's the karmic justice, I guess. What is even more horrible, is that she'll do the time, but all the prosecutors, whose careers she boosted, would walk away from this clean...
  - girvo 13y ago
    Karmic justice? Extralegal justice that I dislike personally. That's like being okay with rape in prisons, cause "they get what they deserve"...
    - reginaldjcooper 13y ago
      Seriously. There are reasons US prisoners keep going back in and part of it is the focus on punishment instead of rehabilitation. Haven't the US a whole amendment dedicated to not using beatings or shankings as a punishment? I wish more people would reflect on why that was considered a good idea back in the day.
    - vsviridov 13y ago
      Look, I don't think that incarceration works at all. But this person created a possiblity for 34 thousands of other people (assuming one case per person) to get potentially raped in the prison. I'm not vengeful or violent mostly, but shit like that makes my blood boil a little. Policemen who wish to carry a tazer used to get electrocuted with one, just so they have an idea what sort of punishment they will dispensing to other people. I think that every lawyer and DA and what not should be thrown in jail, right in the thick of it, so they'd get a good idea about what they subject other people to.
paulftw 13y ago
34000 over nearly a decade career. It's 9.3 cases per day for 10 years, without weekends, vacations or holidays. And 45 minutes of work per case. Provided she had 7hr working day and a lunch break. And she occasionally testified in courts. How is that even possible?
- tokenadult 13y ago
  I had to think about how it could be plausible to anyone, and then I remembered what my late father (a chemistry major who later worked as an industrial engineer) used to tell me about working in chemistry labs. Sometimes you have to sit around and wait while an assay runs, but I suppose an efficient person (who has enough equipment) could run more than one assay at a time, and monitor each result in turn. I have no specialized knowledge about what a normal rate of doing tests would be in a well administered state crime lab.
- mturmon 13y ago
  I like that you ran the numbers, and think you have a good question. One remark in the original article said she had access to files and samples for many cases that she was not primary on. Perhaps that's the issue -- the ability to taint results across the whole departmental workload.
- malandrew 13y ago
  Excellent question and one that raises another one. Could she possibly have tainted that many cases working alone? If not, we should be looking at every one around her including the DA. Simple network analysis of every person (arresting officer, DA and other crime lab technicians) involved in these ~34k cases should be able to come up with a dozen or so people that warrant additional scrutiny.
  - chris_wot 13y ago
    Actually, it says that someone was let out because she was a secondary chemist. So in other words, if she even came close to working on a case, then it's suspect. Not to mention, she falsified lab results to the degree that she didn't even do any testing at all on many samples. That's pretty much close to zero time to file the report. When it comes to intent - she deliberately tainted some samples! Gotta ask yourself why.
stevo111 13y ago
>told police that she messed up big time. She came forward. She came to police and honestly tried to fix it and guess what she got for that - a royally fucked life. I betcha there will not be any more volunteers like that.
nimble 13y ago
Actually, 3-5 years sounds pretty reasonable. If you think about it, you should be glad that she didn't get a crazy "send a message" punishment of 20 years or life in prison. She'll never work in that capacity again, so it's not like there's a need to separate her from society for the protection of society. A better question to address is how a single rogue person could do so much damage. This is institutional failure. Just going after this woman misses the big problem.
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  > She'll never work in that capacity again How do you know? Getting rehired is routine for misbehaving cops.
  - sigstoat 13y ago
    the forensic community is pretty good about these things. the folks who do these things get whispered about like a bogeyman for years. everybody in this woman's field knows about her now, and will be googling up "massachusetts chemist" for the next 20 years whenever they get a female chemist from massachusetts applying for a position.
    - Crito 13y ago
      She lied about her credentials once, what is to stop her from lying about her background again? The risk posed by allowing her to walk free in society is too great; she should be indefinitely detained.
      - sigstoat 13y ago
        maybe it would be more constructive to address that reply to someone talking about her sentencing? i haven't expressed an opinion on it either way. as far as lying about her background, criminal background checks are par for the course in this line of business. anything drug related ever, or anything indicating a propensity for lying are automatic disqualifications.

34000 tainted cases is not "messed up big time". It's deliberate and malicious. And she gets 3-5 years? Bullshit.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

matthewmacleod 13y ago
What's the justification for that? What qualifies you to pass such a sentence, and what makes the sentence the justice system settled on inappropriate?
- njharman 13y ago
  The extreme magnitude of the impact of her crime. Injuring 34,000 victims. "Breaking" the justice system. Abuse of the extraordinary power society placed in her.
- dreamdu5t 13y ago
  How about serving the sentences she was responsible for? Even if she served 1 day for every sentence that was a result of her intentional tampering of the evidence, she would be serving life.
  - stdbrouw 13y ago
    Justice is about more than retribution.
    - Crito 13y ago
      There is more to consider than merely justice. We also have to protect society from her. How could she ever possibly be trusted again to anything? Hell, I wouldn't even trust her to bag my groceries. She lied about her background once, and harmed thousands of people. Who is to say that in 20 years she won't be found under another name, in another state, running this or another scam again? If our system was set up to rehabilitate, that would be great, but it isn't. As long as she remains un-rehabilitated, she should be kept locked up. Not out of some sense of justice or for retribution, but simply to keep her from harming others again.
    - dreamdu5t 13y ago
      You're right, it's also about deterrence, incapacitation, and reparation to the victim, in addition to punishment.
  - veemjeem 13y ago
    I feel like there must be others who share the responsibility. There's no way a single chemist could be the source of 34,000 convictions. Since they found a second chemist tainting the results at the lab, I'm guessing the entire prosecution system is corrupted.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

Estragon 13y ago

I volunteer with a nonviolent communication program at a local prison, and I would guess that sentence would completely shatter her, at least if she was male. Every fellow inmate will identify with her victims and in a male prison they would be vengeful. Not sure how it will work out in a female prison.

vsviridov 13y ago
Probably. But that's the karmic justice, I guess. What is even more horrible, is that she'll do the time, but all the prosecutors, whose careers she boosted, would walk away from this clean...
- girvo 13y ago
  Karmic justice? Extralegal justice that I dislike personally. That's like being okay with rape in prisons, cause "they get what they deserve"...
  - reginaldjcooper 13y ago
    Seriously. There are reasons US prisoners keep going back in and part of it is the focus on punishment instead of rehabilitation. Haven't the US a whole amendment dedicated to not using beatings or shankings as a punishment? I wish more people would reflect on why that was considered a good idea back in the day.
  - vsviridov 13y ago
    Look, I don't think that incarceration works at all. But this person created a possiblity for 34 thousands of other people (assuming one case per person) to get potentially raped in the prison. I'm not vengeful or violent mostly, but shit like that makes my blood boil a little. Policemen who wish to carry a tazer used to get electrocuted with one, just so they have an idea what sort of punishment they will dispensing to other people. I think that every lawyer and DA and what not should be thrown in jail, right in the thick of it, so they'd get a good idea about what they subject other people to.

paulftw 13y ago

34000 over nearly a decade career. It's 9.3 cases per day for 10 years, without weekends, vacations or holidays. And 45 minutes of work per case. Provided she had 7hr working day and a lunch break. And she occasionally testified in courts. How is that even possible?

tokenadult 13y ago
I had to think about how it could be plausible to anyone, and then I remembered what my late father (a chemistry major who later worked as an industrial engineer) used to tell me about working in chemistry labs. Sometimes you have to sit around and wait while an assay runs, but I suppose an efficient person (who has enough equipment) could run more than one assay at a time, and monitor each result in turn. I have no specialized knowledge about what a normal rate of doing tests would be in a well administered state crime lab.
mturmon 13y ago
I like that you ran the numbers, and think you have a good question. One remark in the original article said she had access to files and samples for many cases that she was not primary on. Perhaps that's the issue -- the ability to taint results across the whole departmental workload.
malandrew 13y ago
Excellent question and one that raises another one. Could she possibly have tainted that many cases working alone? If not, we should be looking at every one around her including the DA. Simple network analysis of every person (arresting officer, DA and other crime lab technicians) involved in these ~34k cases should be able to come up with a dozen or so people that warrant additional scrutiny.
- chris_wot 13y ago
  Actually, it says that someone was let out because she was a secondary chemist. So in other words, if she even came close to working on a case, then it's suspect. Not to mention, she falsified lab results to the degree that she didn't even do any testing at all on many samples. That's pretty much close to zero time to file the report. When it comes to intent - she deliberately tainted some samples! Gotta ask yourself why.

stevo111 13y ago

>told police that she messed up big time. She came forward. She came to police and honestly tried to fix it and guess what she got for that - a royally fucked life. I betcha there will not be any more volunteers like that.

nimble 13y ago

Actually, 3-5 years sounds pretty reasonable. If you think about it, you should be glad that she didn't get a crazy "send a message" punishment of 20 years or life in prison. She'll never work in that capacity again, so it's not like there's a need to separate her from society for the protection of society. A better question to address is how a single rogue person could do so much damage. This is institutional failure. Just going after this woman misses the big problem.

thaumasiotes 13y ago
> She'll never work in that capacity again How do you know? Getting rehired is routine for misbehaving cops.
- sigstoat 13y ago
  the forensic community is pretty good about these things. the folks who do these things get whispered about like a bogeyman for years. everybody in this woman's field knows about her now, and will be googling up "massachusetts chemist" for the next 20 years whenever they get a female chemist from massachusetts applying for a position.
  - Crito 13y ago
    She lied about her credentials once, what is to stop her from lying about her background again? The risk posed by allowing her to walk free in society is too great; she should be indefinitely detained.
    - sigstoat 13y ago
      maybe it would be more constructive to address that reply to someone talking about her sentencing? i haven't expressed an opinion on it either way. as far as lying about her background, criminal background checks are par for the course in this line of business. anything drug related ever, or anything indicating a propensity for lying are automatic disqualifications.