Annie Dookhan
Annie Dookhan
IIA
Annie Dookhan in response to competitive pressures within her organisation appeared to be delivering stellar results. However it was later found that her results were achieved by severally compromising quality.
The organisation "Forensic Outreach" put the following article on its website.
Transforming Annie Dookhan from an honorable forensic scientist into a criminal was simple. She merely had to forget her ethical obligation to do proficient and professional work. She had to cut corners to make herself look good, lie, cheat, concoct facts, and then certify intentional falsehoods during sworn courtroom testimony.
Annie Dookhan was an ambitious, smart, talented and personable forensic chemist. She had a reputation as being "superproductive" and "supercompetitive". She put in long hours. She had exceptional lab experience. In 2003, she joined the William A. Hinton State Laboratory in Massachusetts, and was assigned to help catch up on the backlog of drug samples that needed to be tested for criminal proceedings. She certainly augmented that task: in her first year at the lab, she tested 9,239 drug samples, more than three times the norm for other chemists in the lab. The next year, her total of 11,232 tests was astounding - but appreciated.
So how did she do it? When asked, she pointed to lots of unpaid overtime, skipping lunch to keep up the pace, and a dedication to "helping out. In an email to a district attorney, she claims modestly that it "is just in my nature to assist in any way possible". Still, colleagues in the lab were suspicious. Lab supervisor Peter Piro later testified that he rarely saw Dookhan in front of a microscope. When some of her reports identifying cocaine turned out to be heroin, she would withdraw the report, correct the language and resubmit it. There were many other indicators that something was seriously amiss, but internal politics and the heavy workload deflected suspicion by her supervisors. When concerns by peers finally came to the attention of one supervisor, that person simply reviewed her reports without retesting samples and proclaimed Dookhan's work to be "just fine".