Annie Dookhan, the disgraced former state chemist whose crimes led to scores of defendants being released from prison, is herself out of jail.
Dookhan is no longer in the custody of the Department of Correction, an agency spokesman confirmed to the Herald. She had been held at the Framingham women’s prison, according to past online records, but Dookhan is no longer listed in the state’s online inmate search.
“She has been paroled,” Massachusetts Department of Correction spokesman Darren Duarte said, though he didn’t have the exact date of her release.
Dookhan was sentenced to three-to-five years in prison in November 2013 after pleading guilty to several counts of obstruction of justice, perjury and tampering with evidence. At the time she was sentenced to two years probation upon release.
Officials have said she was tied to as many as 46,000 cases, a staggering number that launched the state’s criminal justice system into a crisis in the fall of 2012 that still reverberates today. So widespread was her fraud that prosecutors refer to some who come before the court as a “Dookhan defendant” as shorthand for a person who had previously been convicted through her tainted evidence.
Nicolas Gordon, the attorney who represented Dookhan during her criminal case, said she was released roughly a month ago, adding that he wasn’t surprised she was paroled well before the five-year limit on her sentence because she had no record.
He said her focus has been on her family and adjusting to “normalcy.”
“She’s moving forward with her life and she has a very positive outlook on the future,” Gordon said. “I don’t think she’s made any major life decisions about what she’s going to do. She’s certainly keeping her options open.”
In addition to falsifying evidence, Dookhan also pleaded guilty to falsely claiming that she held a master’s degree in chemistry.
One of the conditions set for her probation was that she not use the false credentials when seeking employment after serving her sentence. She was also ordered to have mental health evaluations after leaving prison.
