RIGGEDLabs Podcast

Chris was unavailable for this episode so it was just Jamie and Ilyas talking about the Real Cost of Prisons with activist Lois Ahrens. We discuss what are the drivers behind mass incarceration in Massachusetts and what people who want to advocate for change can do to force their elected officials to take action. This is a great conversation for those who wonder why nothing was ever done about what happened at the drug labs and with other scandals in Massachusetts involving law enforcement.

Chris, Ilyas and Jamie interview MassLive and Republican reporter Stephanie Barry about her reporting on the Greg Bigda case and the Springfield PD in general. Stephanie has been reporting on Springfield PD corruption for years and her insights and thoughts on these cases. This is a great, thought provoking episode on how corrupt our criminal justice system really is in Massachusetts.

To say that this episode is disturbing is a major understatement. Jamie, Ilyas and Chris review the video of Springfield Detective Greg Bigda who was indicted in 2018 by a federal grand jury for excessive force in connection with allegedly punching and kicking young car theft suspects during an arrest in 2016, two counts of “abusive interrogation” for threatening to kill and plant drugs on them, plus drafting a false police report. He faced up to 15 years behind bars if convicted.

Bigda was unbelievably acquitted of these charges by a jury that truly needs to have it's collective heads examined. The jury heard the same audio that is featured in this podcast. They heard an unhinged man screaming at teenagers and threatening to murder them and "get away with it" and that he was going to plant drugs on one of the kids and lock him away for 15 years.

This is truly an unbelievable episode that will leave you shocked and outraged. Enjoy!

The second half of our review of the federal investigation of the Springfield Police Department. *Spoiler Alert* The Springfield PD REALLY likes punching people in the face.

Luke Ryan returns to discuss the Department of Justice's 2018 investigation into the Springfield Police Department. This investigation uncovered the illegal, immoral and often criminal abuses of power undertook by the SPD's Narcotics department. The shocking details of the criminal activity of this department need to be heard to be believed. All that and a brief opinion on the Rittenhouse verdict, all on the latest episode of Rigged.

The conclusion of our look into the state's intentional misclassification of Class E drugs.

Chris, Ilyas and Jamie discuss the biggest story no one has ever talked about with this case, chemists from Hinton, Amherst and the State Police Labs intentionally falsely classifying drugs to send people who they know to be innocent to jail. While we have touched upon this subject in previous episodes, we haven't gone over exactly what happened until now.

There has never been an article on this subject and this is the first time that the state police's drug testing lab has been implacated in any wrong doing in the seemingly never ending drug lab scandal. As always this is breaking news and you will only find it here, on Rigged!

Jamie, Ilyas and Chris review lawyer Nathan Tamulis' Feburary 2016 response to the Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General Supplemental Report. The sheer amount of contradictions, half truths and outright falsehoods that exist in this report is depressingly unsurprising.

Ilyas, Chris and Jamie go through the rest of the OIG's Supplemental report. They discuss the inconsistencies in the report and begin looking into the Class E drug classification disaster that was briefly touched upon in the report. Much of the testing malfeasance covered in this episode was done by chemists not named Annie Dookhan yet the OIG still insists Annie Dookhan was the lone bad actor at the lab.

Jamie, Ilyas and Chris begin season 2 of Rigged by covering the latest news on the former Attorney General employees who hid the extent of Sonja Farak's drug use from defense attorneys. They then discuss the 2016 Inspector General supplemental report which got little to no media attention.

This report documented the OIG's retesting of samples that the lab ran multiple times while only reporting the final results to the courts. This was clearly the lab doing everything it could to make sure that results came back positive and repeatedly testing evidence until they got their desired results.

These shocking realities are directly opposed to all the assertions that have been made by the state about the Hinton Lab. Namely that Annie Dookhan was the lone bad actor at the Hinton Lab and no one else was found to tamper with evidence.