SJC Dismisses Thousands of Drug Convictions after Amherst Lab Scandal

The state’s highest court has ordered thousands more drug convictions dismissed based on a chemist’s misconduct in a state lab in Amherst and state prosecutors’ withholding of evidence about that wrongdoing.

In a sweeping decision issued on Thursday, the Supreme Judicial Court dismissed with prejudice every methamphetamine-related conviction from the nine years that former chemist Sonja Farak worked at the Amherst lab, as well as all cases involving drug tests from that lab from Jan. 1, 2009 through Jan. 18, 2013. The state attorney general’s office will be responsible for the costs of identifying and notifying those whose cases would be overturned.

Read more:

https://www.gazettenet.com/SJC-dismisses-thousands-of-drug-convictions-after-Amherst-lab-scandal-20810863

https://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2018/10/thousands_more_drug_defendants.html

http://www.wbur.org/news/2018/10/11/farak-cases-dismissed-by-sjc

The Court’s full decision can be found at:

https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2018/10/11/12471.pdf