Boston man whose Supreme Court case led to a string of overturned drug convictions finally has his own drug conviction overturned

File under: Slowly grinding wheels of justice? Several months after the US Supreme Court ruled evidence used against a Boston man was unconstitutional - and after Massachusetts courts began throwing out convictions based on that ruling - the man has finally had his own conviction overturned.

In Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, the Supreme Court ruled that introducing certificates that a substance found with defendants were drugs without giving their lawyers the chance to cross examine the experts who signed the documents violated the constitutional right to confront one's accusers. But the court did not overturn Luis Melendez-Diaz's 2001 coke-possession conviction, saying it would leave it up to a Massachusetts court to decide whether he would have been convicted anyway.

In a ruling today, the Massachusetts Appeals Court said that Melendez-Diaz should, indeed, have his verdict reversed, because the certificate - and the testimony of police officers not specifically trained as drug experts - was so central to his conviction that his fundamental rights were violated under the Supreme Court decision. Melendez-Diaz was a passenger in a car stopped by police who were after an acquaintance charged with stealing from a store at the South Bay shopping center; during a search, officers found what appeared to be cocaine.

In the months since the Supreme Court ruling, the Massachusetts Appeals Court has thrown out several drug and gun convictions based on the Melendez-Diaz decision. Just today, in fact, the court also overturned the conviction of a Lowell man found with more than 3,000 bags of what police and a drug expert said was heroin.

Last month, though, the court upheld a Lawrence man's conviction because the certification was not central to his conviction - even though his lawyer did not get a chance to cross examine a drug expert, the man's defense was that marijuana found in his bedroom was not his, not that it wasn't pot.

Complete Mass. Appeals Court ruling.