Mastroianni said the half dozen staffers he has working on the names have not yet found any case that was affected by the lab.
This is an updated version of a story posted at 3:30 this afternoon.
SPRINGFIELD – The top prosecutor in Hampden County said Tuesday the state has given his office a list of nearly 100 names to check and see if they were affected by a state drug lab scandal in Jamaica Plain.
Hampden District Attorney Mark G. Mastroianni said the half dozen staffers he has working on the names have not yet found any case that was affected by the lab.
But, he said, he is meeting with judges named Tuesday to oversee any cases that are found to be tied to the Hinton laboratory.
That way, Mastroianni said, if a case is found a process can be used immediately.
“I’m not ruling out we’re going to find some,” he said.
He described the process of checking names as very time and labor intensive, saying the state seems to be putting a lot of names on the list to make sure no one was convicted unjustly.
Both Mastroianni’s office and Northwestern District Attorney David E. Sullivan’s office use the drug laboratory at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst for testing. The problem is only at the Hinton laboratory in Jamaica Plain.
The state Trial Court Tuesday assigned judges to sit in special sessions around the state that will handle cases that were potentially compromised, state Trial Court spokeswoman Joan Kenney said..
Former state chemist Annie Dookhan is at the center of the scandal. She pleaded not guilty Friday in Boston Municipal Court to charges of obstruction of justice and falsifying her academic record. She was released after posting $10,000 cash bail.
She allegedly admitted to state police investigators that she mishandled drug evidence at the state lab in Jamaica Plain, removing evidence from the evidence room without signing it out, forging coworkers’ signatures on reports, and not properly testing drug samples for about two or three years.
Designated to oversee any Superior Court cases in the four Western Massachusetts counties is Superior Court Judge C. Jeffrey Kinder.
District Court Judges Maureen Walsh and W. Michael Goggins are designated to oversee Springfield District Court and Northampton District Court cases.
Walsh is designated to oversee Greenfield District Court cases and Judge Paul Vrabel is to oversee Pittsfield District Court cases.
Northwestern District Attorney David E. Sullivan said the lab scandal has not directly impacted any of his office’s cases. He said he was sent 13 or 14 names from the state to check and no connection to the Hinton laboratory was found.
Mastroianni and Sullivan both said part of the labor intensive process includes looking at cases in which a previous offense was handled in another county that used the Hinton laboratory.
If the person was then convicted in Hampden, Hampshire or Franklin County as a subsequent offender, the cases need to be checked to make sure the previous conviction wasn’t in a jurisdiction that used the Hinton laboratory.
Mastroianni said people could have been put on the state list given to his office for a variety of reasons that don’t mean a case has to be reviewed here.
People could be on the state list given to his office because they were convicted in another county but moved to a Hampden County correctional facility to serve some of their sentence, he said.
Jeremy Bucci, Chief Trial Counsel for Sullivan’s office said although no cases connected with the Hinton laboratory have been found, “We are however, fielding calls from pro se defendants, members of CPCS (the Committee for Public Counsel Services), and private bar counsel regarding individuals concerned that their drug evidence could have been tested at the Jamaica Plain laboratory.”
“We are investigating whether these reporting individuals either had the drugs in their cases tested in the Jamaica Plain laboratory or whether any prior convictions that formed the basis of any enhanced charges resulting in convictions in this jurisdiction had drugs analyzed by the Jamaica Plain laboratory,” he said.