She needs serious jail time with the innocent people she put in prison. Who was watching or supervising this knuckle headed idiot? Like I always say:"The only justice in Mass is Street Justice" this is one of the reasons we don't trust the police or judicial system.

It's pretty clear that the oversight in our justice system failed us and the Massachusetts State Police have lost significant credibility here.  There is no excuse for this situation to have existed for so long.  It's a real shame to see that innocent people may have been found guilty and that the guilty may go free.  Stupid.  There better be more than just a few job losses here, hopefully some serious punishment.

Over the past decade things have been popping up just like this in other states. This is not an isolated phenomenon. It is not surprising to me at all. If they were mixing and lying etc. Someone was surely sampling at the same time. I will bet on that. A real mess probably because of lack of personnel due to budget constraints is the story we will get. UNACCEPTABLE!

As I have posted before, this is management failure, and management failure that leads to criminal mis-prosecution. Human nature is such that good people will make occasional mistakes, others frequent mistakes, and still others may have an agenda to intentionally manipulate results. These problems MUST be detected by management. To be detected they must be detectable. In other words, there must be ways of validating and cross checking the results -- perhaps the analysis needs to be done by twice by two separate entities and with annonymous evidence tags such that neither entity knows which case the analysis is for. Furthermore, since good people will still make occasional mistakes, there should always be a way to the defendant to dispute test results and cause a re-test. But let's be clear: the biggest problem here is with the SYSTEM, either with the way this process is managed, or with those who are managing it. Sounds like Gov Patrick is handling this with appropriate care. I will be interested to see what results.

People should not be surprised if these kinds of problems are also "popping up in other states". Dispite the cliches, the justice system often makes mistakes, people in jail are sometimes innocent, and innocent people sometimes do get the death penalty. Glibly saying otherwise does not make it so. It simply means that your observations and conclusions as to what constitutes reality are faulty. More simply put, you are an idiot.

On a totally different subject, the Metro story, "Lexington schools chief asks for state review of time-out rooms" does not have a comments button (ie, comments are not provided for). Why?  Perhsps that has something to do with why the parent's op-ed was in the NY Times and not the Globe? By the way, I heard Mr. Ask on an interview on public radio and he questioned the parent's assertion of the institutions that had been notified of his complaint by saying, "there is no record of a complaint being filed". If the father had notified the institutions via a phone call, and not in writing, then it would have been easy for there not to be a record of the call. It sounded to me that Mr. Ash was a slippery character trying to impugn the parent's character -- not the type of person who should be in that management position.

Per my previous comment I request that Deirdre Fernandes -- the author of the article on the Lexington schools situation -- explain why she did not provide for comments.

I am the furthest example of a sympathetic person you'll find when the total pool of evidence is so strong.  That said, I would expect to see many of these cases get dismissed and collective high-five from those convicted.  Some will be exonorated, some will have learned from their mistakes but there are others who will jump right back into old habits.  I hope that when they get scooped up again, any prior convictions that might have been overturned are able to be introduced during the hearings/arguments.

One amplification of my first comment. When I say the problem is the SYSTEM what I am pointing out is that there will be an attempt to shame and disgrade Annie Dookhan as though the problem was that SHE IS NOT A GOOD PERSON. Do not be prersuaded that this is JUST an individual's failure. Ask why a problem individual is allowed to go undetected by managment for YEARS AND YEARS. Because there will be future problem individuals. How is this system going to detect them. Does the system really care about justice?

Rileysdad wrote, "Totally the wrong forum for this comment. You need to ping the editors or the bg.com support link. They have been responsive."

I disagree -- your Reply is arrogant. It is not a reasonable expectation that people should complain only in certain ways (especially when those ways have not been made clear).  But, if you are correct on the preferred way, why has the Globe itself not said so?