Man Released in Lab Crisis Allegedly Returns to Drug Trade

Boston, Nov. 13, 2012—A Dorchester who recently won an early release from a three-year prison sentence amid a crisis at the state drug lab today found himself back in court after he was arrested once again on a new drug distribution case, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

Assistant District Attorney Larry Bates recommended that TORRIE HAYNES (D.O.B. 9/14/82) be held on $10,000 bail at his arraignment on charges of distribution of a Class B substance as a subsequent offense, resisting arrest, and two counts of assault and battery on a police officer. Bates also asked that his bail out of Suffolk Superior Court, where a judge stayed his earlier sentence last month, be revoked.

Boston Municipal Court Judge Eleanor Coe Sinnott imposed $2,000 and ordered Haynes held without bail on the Superior Court case.

Including his January conviction in Superior Court, Haynes has been convicted of drug distribution offenses five different times in four different courts and has three prior convictions for assault and battery, prosecutors said.

Boston Police Drug Control Unit detectives witnessed Haynes take part in what they believed to be a drug transaction on East Berkeley Street in Boston’s South End at about 4:50 p.m. Saturday afternoon.

When approached by officers, Haynes allegedly began to back away and repeatedly made swallowing motions, leading police to believe he had more drugs in his mouth that he was attempting to swallow, prosecutors said.

During a struggle in which police tried to keep him from swallowing the objects in his mouth, prosecutors allege that Haynes bit one officer and injured a second when he landed on that officer’s ankle. Haynes spit out four plastic bags of crack cocaine, according to prosecutors. Police also recovered a $5 bill that prosecutors said Haynes tossed in a sewer grate.

Haynes was released on Oct. 16 from a three-year prison sentence following a January conviction for distribution of a Class B substance as a second or subsequent offense. His conviction for that incident arose out of a 2011 arrest for cocaine distribution also in the South End. A Suffolk Superior Court judge stayed that sentence after the chemist who tested that cocaine, Annie Dookhan, was accused of mishandling evidence in other drug cases.

Haynes was one of 238 men who sought to have their Suffolk Superior Court drug sentences stayed because Dookhan played a role in testing the substances they possessed, distributed, or trafficked, and one of 109 who did so successfully during a series of specialized session dedicated to cases affected by the drug lab disaster.

Haynes was represented by attorney Kevin Greenhalgh. He will return to the BMC on Dec. 12 and Suffolk Superior Court on Nov. 19.

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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.