[nimble]

Actually, 3-5 years sounds pretty reasonable. If you think about it, you should be glad that she didn't get a crazy "send a message" punishment of 20 years or life in prison. She'll never work in that capacity again, so it's not like there's a need to separate her from society for the protection of society.

A better question to address is how a single rogue person could do so much damage. This is institutional failure. Just going after this woman misses the big problem.

[bmelton]

If she were sentenced 1 day's prison time for each of the occurrences, it would add up to ~40,000 days in prison, or ~109 years.

I don't disagree that there's an institutional failure, and that perhaps there are others to blame, but she has negligently affected countless lives by disregarding her oaths to uphold the law, and I believe that sort of thing should carry more penalty, not less. Also, we really, really need to start making our civil servants accountable to flagrant violations of the law, lest we have more of them lying before Congress without fear of actual penalty.

[judk]

I suspect the more they pin on her (and the news articles so far have been very much "witchy"), the more they will deflect from the lax oversight in the lab and the collusion of the prosecutors.

[bmelton]

I don't disagree at all. Meanwhile, I'm convinced that the more they don't pin on her, the more it means that they're giving her lenience so that she doesn't roll over and spill details on those institutional failures that they might all have been a part of.

FYI, this post is egregiously oversimplifying, and I deserve ridicule for that, but I'm going to bed -- on a normal day, I wouldn't respond to this for some time.

[malandrew]

I'm fine with 3-5 years so long as everyone else responsible in this situation, including DAs are subject to due process as well. There is no way that one person is responsible for almost 34k tampered cases all on her own without many other people being involved or at least aware.

I'm not a fan of our overly aggressive justice system, but if it is going to be overly aggressive, it needs to apply equally aggressively to the watchers as well. Any asymmetry in application of the current practices leaves far more room for abuse in the future than one that is applied equally to all parties. Justice is blind. If she is going to aggressively wield her sword, both your standard street thugs and corrupt government officials should have equal chance of getting struck by her sword.

We can't let the entire system throw her under the bus for 20+ years, while many other guilty parties get away after having been complicit or actively colluded.

[veemjeem]

Yeah, based on the email content from the prosecutors, it looks like they were in on it too. How does a 50lbs package of marijuana magically become 80lbs as requested by the prosecutor? It sounds like the entire system is corrupt.

[malandrew]

Prosecutors are the ones I want most to see investigated here. I would not be surprised is this is a real life example of Stanley Milgram's 1963 obedience to authority experiments.

From Wikipedia:

    If at any time the subject indicated his desire to halt the experiment, 
    he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this 
    order:[1]

        1) Please continue.
        2) The experiment requires that you continue.
        3) It is absolutely essential that you continue.
        4) You have no other choice, you must go on.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were emails from prosecutors that essentially parroted these instructions in a more indirect form.

"Please examine the evidence again."

"Finding justice requires that you examine the evidence again"

"It is absolutely essential that you examine the evidence again"

"You have no other choice, you must examine the evidence again"

[thaumasiotes]

> She'll never work in that capacity again

How do you know? Getting rehired is routine for misbehaving cops.

[sigstoat]

the forensic community is pretty good about these things. the folks who do these things get whispered about like a bogeyman for years. everybody in this woman's field knows about her now, and will be googling up "massachusetts chemist" for the next 20 years whenever they get a female chemist from massachusetts applying for a position.

[Crito]

She lied about her credentials once, what is to stop her from lying about her background again?

The risk posed by allowing her to walk free in society is too great; she should be indefinitely detained.

[sigstoat]

maybe it would be more constructive to address that reply to someone talking about her sentencing? i haven't expressed an opinion on it either way.

as far as lying about her background, criminal background checks are par for the course in this line of business. anything drug related ever, or anything indicating a propensity for lying are automatic disqualifications.

[Crito]

I am addressing this: "everybody in this woman's field knows about her now, and will be googling up "massachusetts chemist" for the next 20 years whenever they get a female chemist from massachusetts applying for a position." Googling a liar is a poor defense.

Background checks obviously didn't figure out that she was lying the first time. Why should we trust them a second time?

[sigstoat]

> Background checks obviously didn't figure out that she was lying the first time. Why should we trust them a second time?

i think you're somehow confused about the core concept of a background check.

i think also that you've got a bone to pick, and you're trying to figure out who it is with. good luck there, little buddy.

[jfim]

> This is institutional failure.

Indeed. I wonder how hard it would be to have random testing of the chemists' work.

[Crito]

I believe part of the accusations are that she actually tainted evidence. So testing her results would not be sufficient, you would need to test samples that she never had access to in the first place.

[sigstoat]

reputable labs already have every single piece of work looked over, and the process completely repeated for random samples at increasing intervals of time.

and defendants should have their evidence retested by independent labs when possible.

[nrmilstein]

I agree. Without knowing much about penology, punishment for the sake of punishment seems overused in the US. Her prison sentence is short relative to all those given out because of her acts, but I think prison sentences in the US are too long to begin with.