Norfolk County assistant district attorney George Papachristos has resigned amid reports that rogue chemist Annie Dookhan personally contacted him.
The Boston Globe reported Wednesday that the personal phone calls and emails violated protocol and may give defense attorneys grounds to argue additional cases were compromised and should be thrown out.
In a release, the district attorney's office said Papchristos spoke with supervisors and did not want to be "a further distraction from the central issue of the criminal conduct that has been alleged and the complete breakdown of supervision that allowed it to continue."
On Wednesday, the Globe reported investigators concluded Annie Dookhan wasn't romantically involved with Papachristos, but her husband was concerned enough to try to contact him.
Dookhan's attorney did not comment. Papachristos declined to answer the Globe's questions.
Dookhan, 34, of Franklin, is accused of falsifying lab results, and officials say she may have compromised 34,000 cases.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts has asked Attorney General Martha Coakley and district attorneys to throw out cases where a prosecutor directly communicated with Dookhan.
"I think it strengthens our argument quite a lot," Matthew Segal, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, said of the contact between Dookhan and Papachristos.
Anne Goldbach, forensic services director for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, said the correspondence between Dookhan and Papachristos "demonstrates that the amount of contact with the prosecution is even greater than we feared."
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