(NECN: Jennifer Eagan) - Shawn Drumgold says Boston Police targeted him during a drug bust at a Roxbury home in January of 2011. Police seized cocaine and heroin spread out over a kitchen table. They say Drumgold was sitting feet away.
But the judge ruling on Drumgold’s case says prosecutors did not present a strong enough case to directly connect the 47-year-old to the drugs. Drumgold was found not guilty.
Drumgold says he was targeted by police because of a lawsuit he won against the city, which found he had been wrongfully convicted of the murder of a 12-year-old Roxbury girl.
Drumgold had served 15 years in prison for the crime before being freed in 2003. He is awaiting a $14 million payout.
"I believe that the Boston Police was being vindictive and I just want them to leave me alone,” Drumgold told NECN Friday.
Judge David Weingarten did not comment on the doubts raised by Drumgold’s attorney about the validity of the testing of drug evidence by any chemist at the now closed state drug lab in Jamaica Plain. Attorney Rosemary Scapicchio questioned two of embattled chemist Annie Dookhan’s former co-workers at the lab, asking them if they could be sure Dookhan never touched samples for cases which were not hers.
“I cannot be sure of anything that Ms. Dookhan has said that she has done,” said chemist Della Saunders.
Dookhan is accused of tampering with drug evidence during her nine year tenure at the lab. She was the notary on the work of other chemists on Drumgold’s case, but his attorney says Dookhan may have had access to the drug evidence for any case handled by the lab.
“Any evidence that touched that lab during the time that Ms. Dookhan was involved should be thrown out. Any evidence that touched that lab. It appears that she had carte blanche in that lab,” said Scapicchio.
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s office calls the notion that all drug evidence should be thrown out “absurd.”
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