RIGGEDLabs Podcast

Season two of Rigged is kicked off with Ilyas, Jamie and Chris giving a preview of what is in store for the new season. We will touch on the new developments with the Drug Lab cases and also explore some other law enforcement driven scandals that have been making headlines in MA.

These other scandals will include the multiple arrests of evidence room officers in MA as well as the State Police Overtime scandal. This season is going to be a bit more diverse and will examine more drivers of the corrupt criminal justice system in MA.

As it turns out, Annie Dookhan wasn't the only chemist who was friendly with the DAs. In the season 1 finale of Rigged, the boys explore Sonja Farak's emails with the DAs for Western Massachusetts. While listening to this episode, please keep in mind that Farak admitted to being high on cocaine, crack, meth, pot and LSD while testifying to lock people in prison for doing the exact same things. Prosecutors and law enforcement officials were completely clueless as to Farak's state and they also credited her with single handedly putting people into prison. This bombshell episode brings season one of Rigged to a close by the boys playing a round of "What did I learn" from the creation and production of this podcast.

In the penultimate episode of season 1 of Rigged, Luke Ryan returns to discuss the Amherst Lab Operations. Chris, Jamie, Ilyas and Luke look at the media bias that led to keeping the Amherst Lab open and misinforming the public on just how bad the Amherst Lab was. Truly scary considering the implications keeping these labs open had on many people's lives.

After reviewing thousands of documents regarding the investigations Massachusetts did into the state drug labs, perhaps the most disturbing finding is that exactly one person expressed regret that hundreds of thousands of people were denied their right to a fair trial. That one person was Annie Dookhan, the one most responsible for sending innocent people to jail but hardly the only one that could be blamed for it.

In this episode Chris, Jamie and Ilyas review the last of the interviews with the Hinton staff including one with Annie Dookhan herself. The interview that is most telling is perhaps the one that has never been discussed by the media or any investigators, and that was with Norfolk County Prosecutor George Papachristos.

The lack of coverage of the relationships between Dookan and the prosecutors of the cases she worked on remains a disgraceful part of this narrative. Dookhan was romantically obsessed with Papachristos and acted accordingly. She also thought she was doing the right thing by rigging evidence to send people to prison. Why? Because that's what her friends in the prosecutors offices around the state were telling her.

We call this part 3 of the Hinton Lab operations review but it is really part 4. We review Betsy O'Brien's interview with the State Police as well as other chemists. We also dive into an investigation done by the lab after the June Breach that has never been mentioned anywhere. There are many laughs to be had in this episode as the incompetence of the Hinton Drug Testing Lab is on full display. Truly scary stuff here considering how many people lost their freedom due to the testing in this lab.

Every show we like to introduce something new about this case and this show is no exception. Jim McKenna joins Ilyas, Jamie and Chris to review the interviews the Hinton Lab chemists gave to the state police and OIG. We discover that the Hinton Lab actually investigated how certain chemists method of testing samples actually contaminated within an 18 inch radius. While 18 inches doesn't sound like a lot, you have to remember that these chemists operated very close to each other with open containers. The ramifications from this revelation are enormous and were never investigated by the state. The guys also read the interviews the chemists did with the state police shortly before Dookhan's arrest which paint a very clear picture of a lab in shambles.

The Hinton Lab Operations and The June Breach that exposed Dookhan's maleficence are explored in this episode. The June Breach was when Annie took samples out of the evidence offices without getting them assigned to her by the evidence officer. She had asked the evidence office for the samples to be assigned to her but they refused so she just took them. This event led to her being fired and eventually arrested.

As anyone who has made it this far into our podcast knows, Annie Dookhan was not the lone bad actor at the Hinton Lab.

Many chemists at this lab gave false testimony on the stand, used bogus testing methods, lied to investigators and all of them hated the criminal defendants whose evidence they were charged with testing. In part one of our look at the lab, we look at the never before seen documents from the Massachusetts inspector general's investigation from 2013 and discover that many higher level employees responsible for what happened at this lab were never even fired. We also find that the practices of the lab very likely led to cross contamination of drugs, tainting thousands of samples.

Please note, this episode was renamed. Formerly, it was titled 'William A Hinton Drug Lab Operations Part 1'

In 2014, the Massachusetts Inspector General released its report on the William H Hinton Drug Lab from 2002 - 2012. The OIG famously concluded that "Annie Dookhan was the lone bad actor at the Hinton Lab."

While this conclusion has been completely debunked by the documentation that has been release in the years since, what has been overlooked is what the OIG said about Dookhan's motive. They said that they couldn't determine why Dookhan changed negative drug results to positive, they said it definitely wasn't to help prosecutors win criminal cases.

In this episode we debunk the OIG's entire theory with just one email between Dookhan and former Norfolk County ADA George Papachristos where she says she wants to "lock up a defendant and throw away the key". Why hasn't this been reported in the media and why do we need hold the OIG accountable for lying to the public to help cover up the biggest violation of constitutional rights in the state's history? We may never know but what we do know is Dookhan was friends with the ADAs and thought when she was rigging evidence to lock people in jail, she was doing it because she was being told her defendants were dangerous people who needed to be locked up by the ADAs whose cases she was working.

Please note, this episode was renamed. Formerly, it was titled 'Annie Dookhan's Motive'

Duane Cook spent six years of his life behind bars while the state knew his evidence was tampered with by Farak and refused to give him his freedom. This powerful episode clearly demonstrates the lengths the state of Massachusetts went to keep people locked up regardless of their actual guilt or innocence.