BOSTON (AP) — The state is still reeling a year after a scandal at a drug lab threw the legal system into turmoil: More than 330 prison inmates have been released from custody and at least 1,100 cases have been dismissed or not prosecuted because of tainted evidence and other fallout from the facility's closure.

Annie Dookhan stands accused of faking test results, tampering with evidence and routinely ignoring testing protocols.

With thousands of challenges still making their way through the court system, many in the legal community believe it will be years before the cases handled by Dookhan are cleared.

Just two weeks ago, a lawyer appointed by Gov. Deval Patrick to help create a database of Dookhan's cases said more than 40,000 defendants may have been affected, about 6,000 more than officials first estimated.

"Forget having your day in court, forget having a lawyer — it's taken us this long just to get a number on the number of cases that she tested," said Matthew Segal, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

"It's been very damaging to the integrity of the justice system," he said.

Dookhan, 35, treasured her reputation as the most productive chemist in the lab and became the go-to person for prosecutors in drug cases.

But now prosecutors believe Dookhan's reputation was based on fraud. She told state police that instead of testing all the substances turned over to the Department of Public Health lab, she sometimes would test only a fraction of them but certify them all as drugs, authorities said. She has pleaded not guilty and her lawyer hasn't responded to repeated requests for comment.

The scandal led to the resignation of the state's public health commissioner, the resignation of a manager at the lab and the firing of another manager.

The effects have reverberated throughout the state.

The state's public defender says the number of affected cases could be even higher because management and protocol lapses at the lab may have allowed other chemists to cut corners or falsify results. Defense attorneys say all test results at the lab over the last decade should be questioned.

In Suffolk County, which includes Boston, 240 defendants have been released by judges who agreed to put their sentences on hold or reduce their bail for pending cases. About 60 of those released have since been arrested on new charges.

In one case, a career criminal and convicted rapist failed to show up for court after his bail was reduced. Marcus Pixley was rearrested two days later, but his case was cited by prosecutors who feared that dangerous criminals would end up back on the streets. Pixley eventually pleaded guilty to a drug distribution charge and was sentenced to a year in county jail.