Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast

The Podcast beings with the following quote from Richard Nixon's Domestic Policy Chief John Ehrlichman: "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then cimrinalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." It's with that quote that we launch a look into the war on drugs in the nation's most liberal police state Massachusetts. We will be previewing our upcoming season exploring the Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal doing a deep dive on Annie Dookhan, Sonja Farak and the labs that enabled them to rig evidence that resulted in the largest violation of constitutional rights in state history.

The events of the Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal can be traced back to the outcome of the landmark Melendez Diaz v Massachusetts Supreme Court Case. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley argued the case for Massachusetts and it didn't go well. The case and it's implications for the Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal are explored in the first Episode of Rigged: The Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal Podcast.

Lawyer Dana Curhan joins the Rigged Podcast to discuss the case that opened the door for all future dismissals of cases based on Annie Dookhan's testing. This also set the precedent of the state lying about Dookhan's relationship with prosecutors and why she was rigging drug evidence.

We explore guest Chris Post's time working at the public defenders office (CPCS) in Massachusetts. Specifically we discuss Sonja Farak's time at the Hinton Lab where she is suspected of stealing drugs long before she was transferred to the Amherst Lab. Farak also tested at a higher rate than Dookhan and worked closely with her before transferring to the Amherst Lab.

In a landmark decision in the ongoing Massachusetts Drug Lab Scandal, Attorney Jim McKenna obtained a internal Inspector General email that undermined the Inspector General's assertion that Annie Dookhan's drug testing numbers were higher than other chemists. The email names seven chemists that tested at a consistently higher rate than Dookhan for six months or greater. It also indicates that the DPH's statistics for chemists sampling were not to be trusted. These statistics and emails were sent by an independent audit group brought in to investigate the Hinton Lab after Dookhan's arrest.

Exclusive audio from an interview the AG's office did with Amherst Chemist Rebecka Pontes.

Episode 6 of the Rigged Podcast has Jamie, Ilyas and Chris Post again listening to previously unknown interview with UMass Amherst chemist Sharon Salem. According to official FOIA responses from the Massachusetts Attorney General's office, this interview does not exist. Yet somehow, the Rigged Podcast was able to obtain this damning look into the "scientific" practices of the now shuttered drug testing lab from Salem, a chemist and evidence officer for the lab for nearly 30 years. Back in 2015 the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office conducted a secret investigation into the the policies and processes of the UMass Amherst Drug Lab. This exclusive interview with Sharon Salem has never been heard by the public before and resulted in at least one long time Department of Public Health employee being forced into "retirement". This interview could have far reaching implications for all the testing performed at this, and other, drug testing labs in the state.

Part 2 of the epic interview the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office had with former Amherst Chemist Sharon Salem in November of 2015. This interview was part of the AG's investigation into the practices at the drug lab and came almost two years after the Massachusetts Inspector General told the public that Annie Dookhan was the sole bad actor in a Drug Lab scandal that resulted in the dismissal of tens of thousands of criminal cases. Salem discusses how she and her coworkers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst lab created drug standards, received evidence from the police and sampled evidence. The testing and scientific processing of the evidence given to this lab resulted in the conviction of tens of thousands of criminal defendants in Massachusetts. Ilyas, Chris and Jamie review the interview and add their commentary.

After years of litigation, the Massachusetts ACLU prevailed in court and obtained several internal OIG emails which depict conversations the MA OIG had regarding their Hinton Lab investigation back in 2013. The emails directly contradict the OIG's own conclusion that Annie Dookhan was the lone bad actor at the Hinton Lab. Corruption at the highest level of the lab and in the state government are examined and official conclusions are refuted in this explosive episode of the Rigged Podcast.

There are trainwrecks, there are shitshows and then there is the Amherst Drug Testing Lab supervised by Jim Hanchett. Under Hanchett's "supervision", Sonja Farak was allowed to freely steal from police submitted evidence for nearly a decade and why not. Hanchett himself admitted that the lab was too cheap to buy real drug testing standards so he would just pinch from the used samples to make the standards by which the lab tested evidence against since, as Hanchett puts it, before he started at the lab in the late 1970's. Hanchett also indicates the State Police and Hinton Labs were doing the exact same thing for decades. This bogus testing was the basis of every drug conviction in this state for nearly forty years. This interview needs to be heard to be believed. Enjoy part 1!

Continuation of the Hanchett Interview where he confesses to more incompetence and general bad lab practices.

Jim Hanchett is asked why the chemists who worked in his lab misclassified drugs on the stand. When confronted with evidence that Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan conspired to do just that, Hanchett blurts out "We don't just make stuff up!". Unfortunately for many in Massachusetts, his lab was doing just that.

About a month after Annie Dookhan was released from jail, the Massachusetts Attorney General's office brought her in to interview her about lab operations. During the course of the interview, Dookhan falsely represented that she did not manufacture drug standards. Chris, Jamie and Ilyas found clearly evidence of the contrary. If Dookhan was poor and not part of a massive government cover up, she would have been charged with lying to prosecutors and possibly back in jail. As it is she was never charged and was allowed to resume her life. You're aren't going to want to miss part 1 of this bombshell exclusive episode of Rigged!

The second part of the March 2016 interview the Massachusetts Attorney General's office conducted with freshly released Annie Dookhan. Ilyas, Chris and Jamie speculate that Dookhan agreed to the interview as part of her plea agreement which saw her serve under two and a half years on a three to five year sentence. Dookhan makes a false assertion that could jeopardize her future freedom if enough media attention is paid to this interview. Sad that our laws only matter when the media points out someone may have broken them because the state has known about Dookhan lying since 2016 and was even given evidence of it by Chris Post and still nothing from the state, they simply said "Thanks".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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!

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 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.

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!

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.

Before Briana Taylor and George Floyd there was Eurie Stamps. Eurie was a devoted father and grandfather who was laying on his couch on January 5th 2011 12:30 AM watching a Celtics game when the Framingham Police threw a flash bang into his home, smashed in his door and ordered him to the ground. Eurie did as he was ordered and yet he was still shot in the back of the head by a member of the town's paramilitary SWAT Team. This team was disbanded after this incident but that didn't bring back Mr. Stamps or console his grieving family. In this episode we review this case with former Middlesex Daily News Editorial Page Editor Rick Holmes. Mr. Holmes not only discusses this case in detail but also tells the story of Mark Tinsley. Mr. Tinsley committed the heinous crime of driving 40 in a 25 MPH speed zone. For this act he was dragged out of his car and savagely beaten by the Framingham Police who pulled him over. These cases are truly horrifying yet somehow not surprising in the nation's most liberal police state.

Andrew Quemere from The Mass Dump comes on and reviews the state of public records and transparency laws in Massachusetts. Andrew has been submitting public records for 11 years and has seen first hand law enforcement officials knowingly violate the public records law. We get into that plus other drug lab related topics on this episode of Rigged.

Luke is back to discuss the recent news that he has reached an agreement with the state of Massachusetts for 14 million dollars to cover costs associated with the wrongful conviction of 31 thousand drug lab victims. We discuss the settlement and how it came about and the potential of future settlements with the state.

Closing out our review of the Madness within the Framingham PD, Ilyas and Jamie discuss the many alleged crimes committed by members of the department only this time it isn't the people that they arrest making the accusations but the officers of the department itself. Many officers sued each other and accusing each other of lying under oath and other crimes, all somehow, under the nose of the local media who never reported any of these shenanigans. This one needs to be heard to be believed.

In another example of the system walking slowly toward doing the right thing in the drug lab case, a judge in Middlesex County is looking into if Annie Dookhan was, in fact, the lone bad actor. Everyone who is reading this knows that and has known it since this Podcast came out back in 2020 but it is good that the wheels of justice are finally turning. Cheris returns to discuss what this could mean and where the case could go from here.

Jamie, Chris and Ilyas discuss the inditement of former Massachusetts Police Union head Dana Pullman and the tragic tale of former Springfield PD Evidence Officer Kevin Burnham. These two cases show just how corrupt the justice system in Massachusetts truly is and how absolute power corrupts absolutely.

As a police officer, how do you prove to a pastor who calls you a tyrant that you are, indeed, not a tyrant? If your name is Worcester Police Officer Michael Cappabianca Jr. it's simple. You taser the living shit out the priest inside his church and then throw a pregnant woman to the ground. You then arrest the pastor and his son and make up several charges that didn't happen. How could anyone ever consider this man to be a tyrant?! Today's episode has independent journalist Bill Shaner, Andrew Quemere and Chris Post talking all things Worcester PD and how the city enables its police to be truly terrible.

We have been saying it for years but now, thanks to the release of new documents from the OIG, we know that the OIG wanted to charge multiple employees of the drug lab not named Annie Dookhan with criminal misconduct. We discuss these new developments and where the case, and the podcast, are going. Amazing that there is still new news on this case that is over ten years old.

So the Massachusetts Inspector General's Office told all the DAs in the state that they were recommending criminal charges against multiple chemists in the Hinton Lab not just Annie Dookhan. They made these recommendations way back in 2014 and 2015 and the DAs did nothing. The Inspector General then knowingly lied to the public and when they told them that Dookhan was the lone back actor at the Hinton Drug Lab in the conclusion of their report. The blatant lying displayed here by the state is truly astounding and there has been zero accountability.

The Massachusetts Inspector General made criminal referrals for multiple Hinton Lab Chemists, Supervisors and the Lab Director. They did this while never publicly admitting it. They also knowingly lied to the public when they said in their 2014 report on the Hinton Lab that Annie Dookhan was the lone bad actor at the Hinton Lab..Jamie, Ilays and Chris examine these newly unearthed criminal referrals from as far back as 2013 and going all the way up to 2015. We also look at evidence uncovered by Jamie that indicates that the Massachusetts State Police Lab also engaged in behavior that the Inspector General thought was egregious enough to refer Hinton Chemists for Criminal Referrals. No referrals have been made for any chemist outside of Sonja Farak who did not work in the Hinton Lab in spite of the State Police and Amherst chemists engaging in the same behavior that got Hinton chemists into trouble with the OIG. This is a developing story and we divulge information in this episode that no news organization has yet to uncover.

Ilyas and Jamie take a break from the drug lab to do a deep dive into what drives the state to fight their war on drug addicted people. Civil Assist Forfeiture is just a new rendition of the ancient practice of state run overlords using force backed by unfair laws to harass and steal from poor people. Ilyas traces the practice back to the Magna Carta but it certainly predates that. Today police use the principal to take money from the people who the arrest for drug use and distribution to take all of their cash, cars and property. This cash is then used to buy things that don't need to be approved by legislative bodies or reported at all. Boston was caught using this money to buy face recognition technology and placing cameras around the city to spy on its citizens.

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

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.

After a year and a half, finally Chris Post and his fellow attorneys have uncovered more details on the cover up by the Massachusetts Inspector General's office. Apparently there were emails prior to the report being published saying "What do you say about what we found on other chemist misconduct outside of Dookhan?". The Inspector General KNEW more chemists than Dookhan were committing crimes and even referred as many as six lab employees for criminal referrals!This has been no where in the media and has been known by the state since they investigated the lab back in 2013. Shocking yet not surprising.