Jamaica Plain Crime Lab Scandal Hits Home

Last Friday, convicted cocaine dealer Milton L. Britton of Oak Bluffs was released from prison two and a half years before his earliest planned release date, reported the Martha’s Vineyard Times. Britton was arrested in March of 2011 after the Martha's Vineyard Drug Task Force found “39 bags of cocaine with a total weight of 40.5 grams,” in Britton’s apartment.

Britton’s early release is due to the fact that those drugs were sent to the William A. Hinton Laboratory in Jamaica Plain. Last month, the lab was shut down when state officials revealed that chemist Annie Dookhan mishandled evidence - possibly affecting the 34,000 cases. Oak Bluffs was the only town on the Island that used the William A. Hinton Laboratory - most of the Island’s drug cases went to the State Police crime lab in Sudbury for testing,

Britton, who was the former chief probation officer of the Massachusetts Probation Service, plead guilty in an agreed upon deal that he would get a “two and a half year sentence with 18 months to be served in the Dukes County House of Correction,” reported the Times. However, Judge Moriarty rejected the deal and sentenced Britton to three to five years in state prison.