A Dorchester man who recently won an early release from a three-year prison sentence due to the scandal at the state drug lab today found himself back in court yesterday after he was arrested once again on a new drug distribution case in the South End, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney's office. 

Torrie Haynes, 30, was arraigned on Tuesday and held on $2,000 cash bail 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. He was held without bail for drug distribution out of Suffolk 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.

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' Arrest in the South End
Boston Police Drug Control Unit detectives said they witnesssed 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 represented by attorney Duncan Greenhalgh. He will return to the BMC on Dec. 12 and Suffolk Superior Court on Nov. 19.