Ilyas and Jamie take a break from the drug lab to do a deep dive into what drives the state to fight their war on drug addicted people. Civil Assist Forfeiture is just a new rendition of the ancient practice of state run overlords using force backed by unfair laws to harass and steal from poor people. Ilyas traces the practice back to the Magna Carta but it certainly predates that. Today police use the principal to take money from the people who the arrest for drug use and distribution to take a...
Mar 19, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Season 2Ep. 21
The Massachusetts Inspector General made criminal referrals for multiple Hinton Lab Chemists, Supervisors and the Lab Director. They did this while never publicly admitting it. They also knowingly lied to the public when they said in their 2014 report on the Hinton Lab that Annie Dookhan was the lone bad actor at the Hinton Lab.. Jamie, Ilays and Chris examine these newly unearthed criminal referrals from as far back as 2013 and going all the way up to 2015. We also look at evidence uncovered by...
Feb 21, 2023•1 hr 44 min•Season 2Ep. 20
So the Massachusetts Inspector General's Office told all the DAs in the state that they were recommending criminal charges against multiple chemists in the Hinton Lab not just Annie Dookhan. They made these recommendations way back in 2014 and 2015 and the DAs did nothing. The Inspector General then knowingly lied to the public and when they told them that Dookhan was the lone back actor at the Hinton Drug Lab in the conclusion of their report. The blatant lying displayed here by the state is tr...
Feb 16, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 2Ep. 19
We have been saying it for years but now, thanks to the release of new documents from the OIG, we know that the OIG wanted to charge multiple employees of the drug lab not named Annie Dookhan with criminal misconduct. We discuss these new developments and where the case, and the podcast, are going. Amazing that there is still new news on this case that is over ten years old.
Feb 15, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 2Ep. 18
As a police officer, how do you prove to a pastor who calls you a tyrant that you are, indeed, not a tyrant? If your name is Worcester Police Officer Michael Cappabianca Jr. it's simple. You taser the living shit out the priest inside his church and then throw a pregnant woman to the ground. You then arrest the pastor and his son and make up several charges that didn't happen. How could anyone ever consider this man to be a tyrant?! Today's episode has independent journalist Bill Shaner, Andrew ...
Nov 25, 2022•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 17
Jamie, Chris and Ilyas discuss the inditement of former Massachusetts Police Union head Dana Pullman and the tragic tale of former Springfield PD Evidence Officer Kevin Burnham. These two cases show just how corrupt the justice system in Massachusetts truly is and how absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Nov 08, 2022•1 hr 42 min•Season 2Ep. 16
In another example of the system walking slowly toward doing the right thing in the drug lab case, a judge in Middlesex County is looking into if Annie Dookhan was, in fact, the lone bad actor. Everyone who is reading this knows that and has known it since this Podcast came out back in 2020 but it is good that the wheels of justice are finally turning. Cheris returns to discuss what this could mean and where the case could go from here.
Oct 14, 2022•1 hr 21 min•Season 2Ep. 15
Closing out our review of the Madness within the Framingham PD, Ilyas and Jamie discuss the many alleged crimes committed by members of the department only this time it isn't the people that they arrest making the accusations but the officers of the department itself. Many officers sued each other and accusing each other of lying under oath and other crimes, all somehow, under the nose of the local media who never reported any of these shenanigans. This one needs to be heard to be believed....
Aug 18, 2022•1 hr 29 min•Season 2Ep. 14
Luke is back to discuss the recent news that he has reached an agreement with the state of Massachusetts for 14 million dollars to cover costs associated with the wrongful conviction of 31 thousand drug lab victims. We discuss the settlement and how it came about and the potential of future settlements with the state.
Jun 12, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Season 2Ep. 13
Andrew Quemere from The Mass Dump comes on and reviews the state of public records and transparency laws in Massachusetts. Andrew has been submitting public records for 11 years and has seen first hand law enforcement officials knowingly violate the public records law. We get into that plus other drug lab related topics on this episode of Rigged.
Jun 10, 2022•1 hr 40 min•Season 2Ep. 12
Before Briana Taylor and George Floyd there was Eurie Stamps. Eurie was a devoted father and grandfather who was laying on his couch on January 5th 2011 12:30 AM watching a Celtics game when the Framingham Police threw a flash bang into his home, smashed in his door and ordered him to the ground. Eurie did as he was ordered and yet he was still shot in the back of the head by a member of the town's paramilitary SWAT Team. This team was disbanded after this incident but that didn't bring back Mr....
Apr 14, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Season 2Ep. 11
Chris was unavailable for this episode so it was just Jamie and Ilyas talking about the Real Cost of Prisons with activist Lois Ahrens. We discuss what are the drivers behind mass incarceration in Massachusetts and what people who want to advocate for change can do to force their elected officials to take action. This is a great conversation for those who wonder why nothing was ever done about what happened at the drug labs and with other scandals in Massachusetts involving law enforcement....
Mar 08, 2022•1 hr 41 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Chris, Ilyas and Jamie interview MassLive and Republican reporter Stephanie Barry about her reporting on the Greg Bigda case and the Springfield PD in general. Stephanie has been reporting on Springfield PD corruption for years and her insights and thoughts on these cases. This is a great, thought provoking episode on how corrupt our criminal justice system really is in Massachusetts.
Feb 16, 2022•56 min•Season 2Ep. 9
To say that this episode is disturbing is a major understatement. Jamie, Ilyas and Chris review the video of Springfield Detective Greg Bigda who was indicted in 2018 by a federal grand jury for excessive force in connection with allegedly punching and kicking young car theft suspects during an arrest in 2016, two counts of “abusive interrogation” for threatening to kill and plant drugs on them, plus drafting a false police report. He faced up to 15 years behind bars if convicted. Bigda was unbe...
Feb 03, 2022•1 hr 37 min•Season 2Ep. 8
The second half of our review of the federal investigation of the Springfield Police Department. *Spoiler Alert* The Springfield PD REALLY likes punching people in the face.
Nov 30, 2021•57 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Luke Ryan returns to discuss the Department of Justice's 2018 investigation into the Springfield Police Department. This investigation uncovered the illegal, immoral and often criminal abuses of power undertook by the SPD's Narcotics department. The shocking details of the criminal activity of this department need to be heard to be believed. All that and a brief opinion on the Rittenhouse verdict, all on the latest episode of Rigged.
Nov 25, 2021•59 min•Season 2Ep. 6
The conclusion of our look into the state's intentional misclassification of Class E drugs.
Nov 01, 2021•50 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Chris, Ilyas and Jamie discuss the biggest story no one has ever talked about with this case, chemists from Hinton, Amherst and the State Police Labs intentionally falsely classifying drugs to send people who they know to be innocent to jail. While we have touched upon this subject in previous episodes, we haven't gone over exactly what happened until now. There has never been an article on this subject and this is the first time that the state police's drug testing lab has been implacated in an...
Oct 27, 2021•59 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Jamie, Ilyas and Chris review lawyer Nathan Tamulis' Feburary 2016 response to the Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General Supplemental Report. The sheer amount of contradictions, half truths and outright falsehoods that exist in this report is depressingly unsurprising.
Sep 16, 2021•2 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Ilyas, Chris and Jamie go through the rest of the OIG's Supplemental report. They discuss the inconsistencies in the report and begin looking into the Class E drug classification disaster that was briefly touched upon in the report. Much of the testing malfeasance covered in this episode was done by chemists not named Annie Dookhan yet the OIG still insists Annie Dookhan was the lone bad actor at the lab.
Jul 27, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Jamie, Ilyas and Chris begin season 2 of Rigged by covering the latest news on the former Attorney General employees who hid the extent of Sonja Farak's drug use from defense attorneys. They then discuss the 2016 Inspector General supplemental report which got little to no media attention. This report documented the OIG's retesting of samples that the lab ran multiple times while only reporting the final results to the courts. This was clearly the lab doing everything it could to make sure that ...
Jul 17, 2021•1 hr 33 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Season two of Rigged is kicked off with Ilyas, Jamie and Chris giving a preview of what is in store for the new season. We will touch on the new developments with the Drug Lab cases and also explore some other law enforcement driven scandals that have been making headlines in MA. These other scandals will include the multiple arrests of evidence room officers in MA as well as the State Police Overtime scandal. This season is going to be a bit more diverse and will examine more drivers of the cor...
Jul 06, 2021•21 min
As it turns out, Annie Dookhan wasn't the only chemist who was friendly with the DAs. In the season 1 finale of Rigged, the boys explore Sonja Farak's emails with the DAs for Western Massachusetts. While listening to this episode, please keep in mind that Farak admitted to being high on cocaine, crack, meth, pot and LSD while testifying to lock people in prison for doing the exact same things. Prosecutors and law enforcement officials were completely clueless as to Farak's state and they also cr...
Mar 26, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 22
In the penultimate episode of season 1 of Rigged, Luke Ryan returns to discuss the Amherst Lab Operations. Chris, Jamie, Ilyas and Luke look at the media bias that led to keeping the Amherst Lab open and misinforming the public on just how bad the Amherst Lab was. Truly scary considering the implications keeping these labs open had on many people's lives.
Mar 16, 2021•50 min•Season 1Ep. 21
After reviewing thousands of documents regarding the investigations Massachusetts did into the state drug labs, perhaps the most disturbing finding is that exactly one person expressed regret that hundreds of thousands of people were denied their right to a fair trial. That one person was Annie Dookhan, the one most responsible for sending innocent people to jail but hardly the only one that could be blamed for it. In this episode Chris, Jamie and Ilyas review the last of the interviews with the...
Mar 01, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 20
We call this part 3 of the Hinton Lab operations review but it is really part 4. We review Betsy O'Brien's interview with the State Police as well as other chemists. We also dive into an investigation done by the lab after the June Breach that has never been mentioned anywhere. There are many laughs to be had in this episode as the incompetence of the Hinton Drug Testing Lab is on full display. Truly scary stuff here considering how many people lost their freedom due to the testing in this lab....
Feb 21, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Every show we like to introduce something new about this case and this show is no exception. Jim McKenna joins Ilyas, Jamie and Chris to review the interviews the Hinton Lab chemists gave to the state police and OIG. We discover that the Hinton Lab actually investigated how certain chemists method of testing samples actually contaminated within an 18 inch radius. While 18 inches doesn't sound like a lot, you have to remember that these chemists operated very close to each other with open contain...
Feb 09, 2021•1 hr 38 min•Season 1Ep. 18
The Hinton Lab Operations and The June Breach that exposed Dookhan's maleficence are explored in this episode. The June Breach was when Annie took samples out of the evidence offices without getting them assigned to her by the evidence officer. She had asked the evidence office for the samples to be assigned to her but they refused so she just took them. This event led to her being fired and eventually arrested.
Jan 27, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 17
As anyone who has made it this far into our podcast knows, Annie Dookhan was not the lone bad actor at the Hinton Lab. Many chemists at this lab gave false testimony on the stand, used bogus testing methods, lied to investigators and all of them hated the criminal defendants whose evidence they were charged with testing. In part one of our look at the lab, we look at the never before seen documents from the Massachusetts inspector general's investigation from 2013 and discover that many higher l...
Jan 15, 2021•45 min•Season 1Ep. 16
In 2014, the Massachusetts Inspector General released its report on the William H Hinton Drug Lab from 2002 - 2012. The OIG famously concluded that "Annie Dookhan was the lone bad actor at the Hinton Lab." While this conclusion has been completely debunked by the documentation that has been release in the years since, what has been overlooked is what the OIG said about Dookhan's motive. They said that they couldn't determine why Dookhan changed negative drug results to positive, they said it def...
Jan 02, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 15
