Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. Foster replied that because the investigation against Farak was ongoing, she couldnt let him see it. This past Tuesday, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court filed a report saying that more than 24,000 convictions in 16,449 cases have been dismissed as a result of foul play by a former state drug lab chemist. He also "I dont know how the Velis report reached the conclusion it did after reviewing the underlying email documents, said Randy Gioia, deputy chief counsel at the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the states public defender office. ", Prosecutors nationwide pretty uniformly backed this argument, which the Supreme Court rejected in a 54 opinion. Foster Foster said that Kaczmarek told her all relevant evidence had been turned over and that her supervisor told her to write the letter, though both denied these claims. She was released in 2015, as reported by Mass Live. The scandal led. This is the story of Farak's drug-induced wrongdoings, and it's the. "he didn't request a warrant. His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. Farak was arrested the next day, and the attorney general's office assigned the case to Anne Kaczmarek. Emma Camp In her initial police interview, given at her dining room table, Dookhan said she "would never falsify" results "because it's someone's life on the line." Yet state prosecutors withheld Farak's handwritten notes about her drug use, theft, and evidence tampering from defense attorneys and a judge for more than a year. Kaczmarek quoted the worksheets in a memo to her supervisor, Verner, and others, summarizing that they revealed Farak's "struggle with substance abuse." "That was one of the lines I had thought I would never cross: I wouldn't tamper with evidence, I wouldn't smoke crack, and then I wouldn't touch other people's work," Farak said. "No reasonable individual could have failed to appreciate the unlawfulness of [Kaczmarek's] actions in these circumstances," Robertson wrote in her ruling. A scandal erupts, raising questions for the thousands of defendants in her cases. Between the two women, 47,000 drug convictions and guilty pleas have been dismissed in the last two years, many for misdemeanor possession. motion with Hampden Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Kinder to see the evidence for himself. According to a Rolling Stone piece on Farak, she struggled with depression from an early age, one that hasnt responded to medication. They wrote that Farak attempted suicide in high school and was also hospitalized while in college. That settlement awaits approval by a judge. "A forensic analyst responding to a request from a law enforcement official may feel pressureor have an incentiveto alter the evidence in a manner favorable to the prosecution.". Exhausted from the ongoing scandal in Boston, state officials were desperate for damage control. NORTHAMPTON Sonja J. Farak told a nurse at the Western Massachusetts Regional Women's Correctional Center in Chicopee in December 2013 that she used methamphetamines and other stimulants "whenever she could get her hands on them." And since her job as a chemist was to test drug samples at a state drug lab in Amherst, that opportunity came daily. She grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. His is one of what lawyers say could be thousands of convictions questioned in the wake of the Farak scandal. There is no allegation of misconduct against the local prosecutors who presented the case against Penate in Hampden County Superior Court. In worksheet notes dated Thursday, Dec. 22, Farak Farak also had an apparent obsession for her therapists husband, as she was reported to have a folder that shed put together about him, documenting her obsession. Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal Story: 5 Fast Facts. "As the gatekeeper to this evidence, she failed to turn over documents, and she adamantly opposed the requests for access. Talking Politics: Should a new government agency protect the coastline from climate change? Where is Sonja now? On a Friday afternoon in January 2013, a call came in to Coakley's office: "We have another Annie Dookhan out west.". She even made her own crack in the lab. If they'd kept digging, defendants might still have learned the crucial facts. Terms Of Use, (Annie Dookhan (left) and Sonja Farak, Associated Press). "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents, Ryan This is merely a fishing expedition, Foster wrote in At some point, the attorney general's office stopped chasing leads entirely. This story is an effort to reconstruct what was known about Farak and Dookhan's crimes, and when, based on court filings, diaries, and interviews with the major players. One reason that didn't happen, he says: "the determination Coakley and her team made the morning after Farak's arrest that her misconduct did not affect the due process rights of any Farak defendants." She consumed meth, crack cocaine, amphetamines, and LSD at the bench where she tested samples, in a lab bathroom, and even at courthouses where she was testifying. Stream GBH's Award-Winning Content For Parents And Children. When defense lawyers asked to see evidence for themselves, state prosecutors smeared them as pursuing a "fishing expedition.". In a March 2013 Defense attorneys had. Even though Farak found a job after graduation and was settled down with her partner, she continued to struggle with depression and felt like a stranger in her body. In January 2014, she pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and drug possession. They were all rendered unacceptable. Officials recognized the worksheets for what they were: near-indisputable confessions. This threw every sample she had ever tested into question. After contemplating another suicide, she settled on drugs, and the fact that she had such easy access to it at her workplace made it easier for her to get lost in that world. "The mental health worksheets constituted admissions by the state lab chemist assigned to analyze the samples seized in Plaintiffs case that she was stealing and using lab samples to feed a drug addiction at the time she was testing and certifying the samples in Plaintiffs case, including, in one instance, on the very day that she certified a sample," Robertson's ruling reads. Two detectives found Farak at a courthouse waiting to testify on an unrelated matter. When the Farak scandal erupted, that misconduct came into view. Sonja Farak had admitted to stealing and using drugs from the drug lab where she worked as a chemist for around 9 years. Two Massachusetts drug-testing laboratory technicians are caught tampering with and falsifying drug evidence, and prosecutors are reluctant to disclose the full extent of their criminal behavior. | According to the documents released Tuesday, investigators found that Sonja Farak tested drug samples and testified in court while under the influence of methamphetamines, ketamine, cocaine, LSD . Support GBH. Her answer: more than eight years before her arrest. When Farak was arrested,former Attorney General Martha Coakley told the public investigators believed Farak tampered with drugs at the lab for only a few months. "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents," Ryan wrote to the attorney general's office. Privacy Policy | The state and attorneys for some of the defendants agreed to a $14 million settlement to reimburse 31,000 defendants for post conviction-related costs, such as probation and parole fees, drug analysis and GPS monitoring. The worksheets, essentially counseling notes, showed that Farak had been using drugs often on the job for much longer than the attorney general's office had claimed. Despite clear indications that Farak used a variety of narcoticsher worksheets mentioned phentermine, and that vial of powdered oxycodone-acetaminophen had been found at her benchKaczmarek also proceeded as if crack cocaine were Farak's sole drug. The attorney general's representative at these hearings was Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster, a recent hire. Who is Sonja Farak, the former state drug lab chemist featured in the show? ", Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. Even the master's degree on her rsum was fabricated. You can check your records electronically by following this link: https://icori.chs.state.ma.us. TherapyNotes. Investigators gave that information to Kaczmarek and the state AG's office,according tohearings before thestate board that disciplines attorneys. The results of that intake interview and notes from several of Farak's therapists all detailing Farak's drug use going back years were obtained by defense attorneys on behalf of . | Rollins said it covers "a period of time in which either now disgraced chemist Annie Dookhan, or another convicted chemist Sonja Farak ," worked there. A final decision is still pending and must be approved by the state Supreme Judicial Court. But without access to evidence showing how long Farak had been doing this, defendants with constitutional grounds for challenging their incarceration were held for months and even years longer than necessary. Farak wasn't the first Massachusetts chemist to tamper with drug evidence. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. Martha Coakley, then attorney general for the state, argued in Melendez-Diaz that a chemist's certificate contains only "neutral, objective facts." Foster protested that portions of the evidentiary file in question might be privileged or not subject to disclosure. Fue arrestada el 19 de enero de 2013. | And yet, despite explicit requests for this kind of evidence, state prosecutors withheld Farak's handwritten notes about her drug use, theft, and evidence tampering from defense attorneys and a judge for more than a year. In fall 2012, just five months before her arrest, Annie Dookhan confessed to faking analyses and altering samples in the Boston testing facility where she worked. The hotline is open Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Four months after Ryan found the worksheets, Judge Kinder The Board of Bar Overseers (BBO) is reviewing the actions of three prosecutors in the investigation of the scandal to determine whether any of them deliberately withheld potentially exculpatory evidence. Sonja Farak is at the center of Netflix's new true crime docuseries, How To Fix a Drug Scandal. Kaczmarek argued before the BBO, and in response to Penate's lawsuit, that she was focused on prosecuting Farak and not defendants, like Penate, whose criminal cases were affected by Farak's misconduct. As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. Sonja Farak. Among the papers they seized were handwritten worksheets Farak completed for drug-abuse therapy. A judge sentenced Dookhan to three years in prison; she was granted parole in April 2016. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. The actions of Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan caused a racket of such a scale that the state had to recompense for it with millions of dollars and had to make a historic move in the dismissal of wrongful convictions. The Amherst lab had called state police when the two missing samples were noticed in 2013. Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak. The former judges and the state police officers who helped them conducted a thorough review, said Emalie Gainey, spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey. Robertson rejected Kaczmarek's claims she should not be held responsible for the turning over of exculpatory evidence because she was not part of the "prosecution team" in Penate's case. A drug chemist . Massachusetts prosecutors withheld evidence of corrupt state narcotics testing for months from a defendant facing drug charges, and didnt release it until after his conviction, according to newly surfaced documents and emails. "Dookhan's consistently high testing volumes should have been a clear indication that a more thorough analysis and review of her work was needed," an internal review found. She had unrestricted access to the evidence room. "Please don't let this get more complicated than we thought," Kaczmarek replied when Ballou, the lead investigator, flagged irregularities in Farak's analysis in a case featuring pain pills. She's no longer in prison, as Farak has served her sentence. "Thousands of defendants were kept in the dark for far too long about the government misconduct in their cases," the ACLU and the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the state's public defense agency, wrote in a motion. Kaczmarek got a note from Sgt. High Massachusetts Lab Chemist Causes Thousands Of Drug Cases To Be Dismissed. But why were a small handful of prosecutors allowed total control over evidence about one of the worst criminal justice failures in recent memory? But she proceeded on the hunch that Farak only became addicted in the months before her arrest, and her colleagues stonewalled people who were skeptical of that timeline. Out of "an abundance of caution," Kaczmarek didn't present them to the grand jury that was convened to determine whether to indict Farak. In her June 17 ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Katherine Robertson dismissed former Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek's claims of qualified immunity a doctrine that gives legal immunity to some public officials accused of misconduct. Though. She received the American Institute of Chemists Award in her final year as well as a Crimson and Gray Award from the school a year before, which recognized her dedication, commitment and unselfishness in the enrichment of student life at WPI. A Rolling Stone piece on Farak also indicated that she graduated with high distinction from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Cleverly omitting pronouns, she wrote that "after reviewing" the file, "every documenthas been disclosed." motion on behalf of another client to see the evidence. Approximately one year later, she pled guilty to tampering with evidence, unlawful possession, and stealing narcotics. And then the bigger investigation was going to be someone else.". Kaczmarek had obtained the evidence at issue while she was prosecuting Farak on state charges of tampering with evidence and drug possession. Accessibility | She started working shortly after for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health in July 2003 until July 2012, and from July 2012 until January 2013 for the Massachusetts State Police when the lab fell under their jurisdiction. But she worried they might be privileged as health information. Verner, who testified that he didn't "micromanage" Kaczmarek, escaped criticism. In 2017, a different judge ruled that Foster's actions constituted a "fraud upon the court," calling the letter "deliberately misleading." The justices ordered Healey's department to cover all costs of notifying all defendants whose cases were dismissed. A few months before her arrest, Farak's counselor recommended in-patient rehab. Disgraced drug lab chemist Sonja Farak emerges as her own attorney as defendant in $5.7 million federal lawsuit. "It was almost like Dookhan wanted to get caught," one of her former co-workers told state police in 2012. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015 Contributed by Shawn Musgrave (Musgrave Investigations) p. 1. Its no big deal, 14-year-old Farak said to the Panama City News Herald. They were found with their packaging sliced open and their contents apparently altered. In Farak's car, police found a "works kit"crack cocaine, a spatula, and copper mesh, often used as a pipe filter. The information showed that Farak sought therapy for drug addiction and that her misconduct had been ongoing for years. Her notes record on-the-job drug use ranging from small nips of the lab's baseline standard stock of the stimulant phentermine to stealing crack not only from her own samples but from colleagues' as well. Maybe fatigue made them sloppy, or perhaps they actively chose to look the other way as evidence piled up about the enormity of Farak's crimes. The Attorney Generals Office, Velis and Merrigan and the state police declined to answer questions about the handling of the Farak evidence. The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the Amherst crime . Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education. (Netflix) A former state chemist, Sonja Farak, made headlines in 2013 when she was arrested for stealing and using drugs from a laboratory. Before her sentencing, Farak failed a drug test while out on bail, according to Mass Live. Inwardly though, Sonja Farak was striving. She continued to experience suicidal thoughts, but instead of going through with those thoughts, she started taking the drugs that she would be testing at work. She had never quashed a subpoena before, but supervisors told her to fend off motions about Farak. Kaczmarek, along with former assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and John Verner, all face possible sanctions. Read More: Where is Sonja Farak Sister Now? On the surface, their crimes dont seem as injurious and they dont seem to enjoy inflicting pain on others. Over the next four years, Farak consumed nearly all of it. In the aftermath, the court felt it necessary to make clear that "no prosecutorhas the authority to decline to disclose exculpatory information.". How to Fix a Drug Scandal is an American true crime documentary miniseries that was released on Netflix on April 1, 2020. In the aftermath of Farak's arrest, it's been argued that because she was under the influence, all of the cases she tested could be considered to have been wrongfully convicted. Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to stealing samples of drugs from an Amherst drug lab. As How to Fix a Drug Scandal explores, Farak had long struggled with her mental . Both scandals undercut confidence in the criminal justice system and the validity of forensic analysis. The cocaine, found in an unsealed, completed drug-testing kit, tested negativemeaning Farak had seemingly replaced the formerly "positive" drugs with falsified substances. She first worked at the Hinton State Laboratory in Jamaica Plain for a year as a bacteriologist working on HIV tests before she transferred to the Amherst Lab for drug analysis. The Hinton drug lab, operated by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, appears to have been run largely on the honor system. Lab's standards on a fairly regular basis beginning in late 2004 or early 2005," the attorney general's report notes in launching its recounting of the chemist's drug-taking journey . Get all the latest from Sanditon on GBH Passport, How one Brookline studio helps artists with disabilities thrive. It features the true story of Sonja Farak, a former state drug lab chemist in Massachusetts who was arrested in 2013 for consuming the drugs she was supposed to test and tampering with the. T he day Sonja Farak's world unraveled - the day a crack pipe and sliced evidence bags of cocaine were found at her workstation - started like many others: she attended court. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility at GBH, Transparency in Coverage Cost-Sharing Disclosures. Finding that there did not appear to be enough slides in Dookhan's discard pile to match her numbers, the colleague brought his concerns to an outside attorney, who advised he should be careful making "accusations about a young woman's career," he later told state police.
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