A Monday hearing before Justice Botsford of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court confirmed that most Dookhan-involved drug convictions, numbering in the thousands, will be dismissed when a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, the national ACLU, the state public defender agency CPCS, and Fick & Marx LLP comes to an end. In a landmark opinion last week in the case—Bridgeman v. District Attorney—the SJC called on prosecutors to dismiss “large numbers” of Dookhan cases. Today a prosecutor acknowledged that the number of cases slated for re-prosecution will be “much smaller” than the number of cases that District Attorneys will agree to dismiss.
The following statement may be attributed to Matthew R. Segal, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts:
"We hope that District Attorneys will dismiss substantially all of these tainted cases so that the victims of Dookhan’s misconduct can move on with their lives, so that prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges can devote their time to current cases, and so that taxpayer money is not wasted on wrongful convictions. If the District Attorneys agree to dismiss substantially all of these cases, the ACLU of Massachusetts will be first in line to applaud them."
For more information about last week's ruling in Bridgeman, click here.
