Commonwealth v. Resende
Annotate this CaseIn 2007, Defendant pleaded guilty on indictments charging several drug-related offenses. In 2012, Defendant filed a motion to withdraw his guilty pleas based on the misconduct of Annie Dookhan, a chemist who was employed in the forensic drug laboratory of the William A. Hinton State Laboratory Institute from 2003 until 2012. Prior to the issuance of a ruling on Defendant’s motion, the Supreme Court decided Commonwealth v. Scott, in which the Court articulated a framework for analyzing a defendant’s motion to withdraw a guilty plea in a case involving Dookhan’s malfeasance. In light of Scott, as well as new evidence, Defendant filed supplemental pleadings in 2014 in support of his motion to withdraw his guilty pleas. The superior court denied Defendant’s motion to withdraw his guilty pleas. The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed, holding that Defendant was not entitled to the conclusive presumption established in Scott that egregious government misconduct occurred in his case, and therefore, Defendant’s motion to withdraw his guilty pleas was properly denied.
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