The Bristol County District Attorney's Office announced that it will ask the court to dismiss more than 1,500 drug-related cases following a ruling by the state Supreme Judicial Court.

In January, the state called on district attorneys to dismiss cases that were tainted by former chemist Annie Dookhan at the Public Health Department's Hinton Lab in Jamaica Plain. Dookhan was charged for tampering with evidence in drug-related cases, and pled guilty to 27 counts in 2012.

The office filed a listing for dismissal for every applicable court charge on April 18. It is not clear how many Dartmouth cases will be dismissed or retried, as the DA's listing has been impounded by the Supreme Court.

"We are also moving for dismissal in superior court cases where the evidence no longer exists and, consistent with the court criteria, where we could not maintain a prosecution," said District Attorney Tom Quinn in a press release.

In total, the DA's office will ask the court to dismiss 1,500 cases, comprising more than 2,300 individual charges. Statewide, the scandal may have affected more than 20,000 cases, as Dookhan was either the primary or secondary chemist.

The DA's office has already disposed of many Dookhan cases within both the district and superior courts.

"We have worked hard to strike a balance between maintaining the integrity of the system and protecting public safety in many of these cases," said Quinn.

Quinn said that Dookhan's actions imperiled the prosecution defendants who presented a danger to the community, and that his office has independent, untampered evidence to retry 112 of those cases and aims to maintain the convictions.