The Farak scandal came as the state grappled with another drug lab crisis. There were also newspaper articles about other officials caught stealing drugs, including one with a scribbled note, "Thank god I'm not a law enforcement officer." She soon crossed all these lines. His is one of what lawyers say could be thousands of convictions questioned in the wake of the Farak scandal. But whether anyone investigated her conduct during a brief stint working at the state's Boston drug lab is at . But the Farak scandal is in many ways worse, since the chemist's crimes were compounded by drug abuse on the job and prosecutorial misconduct that the state's top court called "the deceptive withholding of exculpatory evidence by members of the Attorney General's office.". 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. Below is an outline of her charges. The Hinton drug lab, operated by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, appears to have been run largely on the honor system. Despite her status as a free woman (who has seemingly disappeared from the public eye), Farak's wrongdoings continue to make waves in the Massachusetts courts. The latest true crime offering from Netflix is the documentary series "How to Fix a Drug Scandal." It dives into the story of Sonja Farak, a chemist who worked for a Massachusetts state drug. Between Farak and Dookhanwho's also featured in How to Fix a Drug Scandal38,000 wrongfully convicted cases have been dismissed, according to the Washington Post. | In the aftermath, the court felt it necessary to make clear that "no prosecutorhas the authority to decline to disclose exculpatory information.". The attorney general's officeKaczmarek or her supervisorscould have asked a judge to determine whether the worksheets were actually privileged, as Kaczmarek later acknowledged. Yet Dookhan's brazen crimes went undetected for ages. Farak as a young. The responsibility of the mess that she created should also rest upon the shoulders of her workplace that allowed her the opportunity to indulge so freely in drugs in the first place. Over the next four years, Farak consumed nearly all of it. They wrote that Lee, disabled by a stew of mental ailments, [spent] her hours surfing the Web in a haze.. As the state's top court put it, the criminal investigation into Farak was "cursory at best.". She stopped the interview when asked about crack pipes found at her bench, and state police towed her car back to barracks while they waited on a warrant. Sonja Farak stole, ingested or manufactured drugs almost every day for eight years while working as a chemist at a state lab in Amherst, Massachusetts. But absent evidence of aggravating misconduct by prosecutors or cops, the majority ruled, Dookhan's tampering alone didn't justify a blanket dismissal of every case she had touched. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. The special hearing officer found Kaczmarek "displayed no remorse" and was "not candid" during the disciplinary proceedings. For years, Sonja Farak was addicted to cocaine, methamphetamine, and amphetamines, the kind of drugs usually bought from street dealers in covert transactions that carry the constant risk of arrest. Patrick appointed the state inspector general to look into it. Her role was to test for the presence of illegal substances, which could be instrumental in thousands of . Her ar-rest led to the dismissal of thousands of drug cases in Massachusetts. Follow us so you don't miss a thing! Months after Farak pleaded guilty in January 2014, Ryan filed a Kaczmarek argued for qualified immunity after she was sued by Rolando Penate, who spent five years in prison on drug charges in which the evidence in his case was tested by Farak. Because the attorney general had "portrayed Farak as a dedicated public servant who was apprehended immediately after crossing the line, there was also no reasonto waste resources engaging in any additional introspection.". 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. In June 2011, Dookhan secretly took 90 samples out of an evidence locker and then forged a co-worker's initials to check them back in, a clear chain-of-custody breach. This not only led to people getting a reprieve from prison but also filing their own lawsuits against the injustice they had to suffer. 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. . Chemist Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to "tampering with evidence" back in 2014 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Who is Sonja Farak? Between the two women, 47,000 drug convictions and guilty pleas have been dismissed in the last two years, many for misdemeanor possession. Looking back, it seems that Massachusetts law enforcement officials, reeling from the Dookhan case, simply felt they couldn't weather another full-fledged forensics scandal. If they'd kept digging, defendants might still have learned the crucial facts. TherapyNotes is a complete practice management system with everything you need to manage patient records, schedule appointments, meet with patients remotely, create rich documentation, and bill insurance, right at your fingertips. Her wrongdoings were exposed when unsealed cocaine and a crack pipe were found under her desk. She later called this dismissive exchange a "plea to God.". "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.". After high school, Sonja went on to major in biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts. Sonja Farak had admitted to stealing and using drugs from the drug lab where she worked as a chemist for around 9 years. In 2012, she began taking from co-workers' samples, forging intake forms and editing the lab database to cover her tracks. Democratic Gov. "he didn't request a warrant. Given the account that Farak was a law-abiding citizen, it is questioned as to how an Foster, now general counsel at the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission, and Kaczmarek, now a clerk magistrate in Suffolk Superior Court, declined to comment for this story. Most of the heat for thisincluding formal bar complaintshas fallen on Kaczmarek and another former prosecutor, Kris Foster, who was tasked with responding to subpoenas regarding the Farak evidence. According to the notes, Farak thought it gave her energy, helped her to get things done and not procrastinate, feel more positive., Her partner Nikki Lee testified before a grand jury that she herself had tried cocaine, that she had observed Farak using cocaine in 2000, and that she had marijuana in her house when police officers arrived to search the premises as part of their investigation of Farak., In Faraks testimony during a grand jury investigation, she said that she became a recreational drug user during graduate school and used cocaine, marihuana, and ecstasy. She also said she used heroin one time and was nervous and sick and hated every minute of it [and had] no desire to use [it] again., Farak met and settled down with Nikki Lee in her 20s. Faraks wife had her own mental health problems, and according to Rolling Stone, Farak would have conflict with her wife every night at home. Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. chemist, Sonja Farak, had been battling drug addiction and had tampered with samples she was assigned to test around the time she tested the samples in Penate's case. Joseph . Dookhan was now spending less time at her lab bench and more time testifying in court about her results. 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. 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. Officials recognized the worksheets for what they were: near-indisputable confessions. Farak trabaj en el laboratorio Amherst desde el verano de 2004 y poco despus comenz a tomar las drogas del laboratorio. In the series, it's explained that Farak loved the energy the meth gave her. The medical records stated that she did not have an existing drug problem that was amplified by her access to more substances. In 2019, she was seen leaving the Springfield Federal Court but declined to comment on the status of the case. Another three days later, state police conducted a full search of Farak's workstation, finding a vial of powder that tested positive for oxycodone, plus 11.7 grams of cocaine in a desk drawer. 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. Thanks largely to the prosecutors' deception, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in October 2018 was forced to dismiss thousands of cases Farak may never have even touched, including every single conviction based on evidence processed at the Amherst lab from 2009 to the day of Farak's arrest in 2013. The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the Amherst crime . Two Massachusetts drug lab technicians Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan were caught tainting evidence in separate drug labs in different but equally shocking ways. Kaczmarek was now juggling two scandals on opposite sides of the state. Sonja Farak was a chemist at a state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 2005 to 2013. To better estimate how many convictions will have to be reviewed because of Farak, the Supreme Judicial Court Gov. As . 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. "All Defendant had to do to honor the Plaintiffs Brady rights was to turn over copies of documents that were obviously exculpatory as to the Farak defendants or accede to one of the repeated requests from counsel, including Plaintiffs counsel, that they be permitted to inspect the evidence seized from Faraks car," Robertson wrote in her ruling. Both scandals undercut confidence in the criminal justice system and the validity of forensic analysis. Before her sentencing, Farak failed a drug test while out on bail, according to Mass Live. Penate alleged Kaczmarek's actions violated his "Brady rights," which require prosecutors to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to defense counsel. She was released in 2015, as reported by Mass Live. Accessibility | State police took these worksheets from Farak's car in January 2013, the same day they arrested her for tampering with evidence and for cocaine possession. Judge Kinder ordered her to produce all potentially privileged documents for his review to determine whether they could be disclosed. Farak was released from prison in 2015 and has kept a low profile since. TherapyNotes. 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 . As How to Fix a Drug Scandal explores, Farak had long struggled with her mental . In "How to Fix a Drug Scandal," a new four-part Netflix docuseries, documentary filmmaker Erin Lee Carr presents the stories of Massachusetts drug lab chemists Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak, and . Her medical records included notes from Faraks therapist in Amherst, Anna Kogan. "Annie Dookhan's alleged actions corrupted the integrity of the criminal justice system, and there are many victims as a result of this," Coakley said at a press conference. Only a few months after Dookhan's conviction, it was discovered that another Massachusetts crime lab worker, Sonja Farak, who was addicted to drugs, not only stole her supply from the. Without access to the diaries, the Springfield judge in 2013 found that Farak had starting stealing from samples in summer 2012. (Netflix) A former state chemist, Sonja Farak, made headlines in 2013 when she was arrested for stealing and using drugs from a laboratory. It was. A judge sentenced Dookhan to three years in prison; she was granted parole in April 2016. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the Amherst lab in 2004. (Featured Image Credit: Mass Live). El 6 de enero de 2014, Farak se declar culpable de los cargos en su contra. Verner's "marching orders," he later testified, were to prosecute Farak with "what was in front of us, the car, things that were readily apparent. The criminal prosecution wasn't the only investigation of the Dookhan scandal. memo to Judge Kinder the next week, Foster said she reviewed the file, and said every document in it had already been disclosed. This is the story of Farak's drug-induced wrongdoings, and it's the story of the Massachusetts Attorney General's office apparently turning a blind eye on those wrongfully convicted because of Farak's mistakes. Farak worked for the Amherst Drug Lab in Massachusetts for 9 years when she was convicted of stealing and using them. Our posture is to not delve into the twists and turns of the investigation or the report and to let it stand on its own, Merrigan said. How to Fix a Drug Scandal: With Shannon O'Neill, Karl Kenzler, Paul Solotaroff, Scott Allen. denied Penates motion to dismiss the case, saying there was no evidence that Faraks misconduct extended to his case. Penate argued the court should follow those findings. Even when she failed a post-arrest drug testprompting the lead investigator to quip to Kaczmarek, "I hope she doesn't have a stash in her house! Many more are likely to follow, with the total expected to exceed 50,000. He recommended she lose her law license for two years; the Office of Bar Counsel later argued Kaczmarek should be disbarred. Instead, Kaczmarek proceeded as if the substance abuse was a recent development. 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. Shawn Musgrave is a reporter who was until recently based in Boston. With the Dookhan case so fresh, reporters immediately labeled Farak "the second chemist. In January of 2013, Sonja Farak, a chemist at a state crime lab in Massachusetts, was arrested for tampering with evidence related to criminal drug cases (Small, 2020).A year later, Farak pleaded guilty to tampering with drug evidence, theft of a controlled substance, and drug possession .She received a sentence of 18 months with 5 years of probation and was released in 2015. This was not true, as Nassif's department later conceded. Her access to evidence was not restricted, and she continued testifying in court. Several defense attorneys who called for the Velis-Merrigan investigation say the former judges and their state police investigators got it wrong. Relying on an investigation conducted by state police, the judges In an August 2013 email, Ryan asked Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster to review evidence taken from Farak. She received an email from a detective weeks after Farak's arrest containing detailed notes Farak made in conjunction with her own drug treatment, pointedly identified as "FARAK Admissions" but failed to disclose them for years. Initially, she had represented herself in answer to the complaints lodged against her, but later, she turned to Susan Sachs, who represented her since, not just on the Penate lawsuit, but also on any other case that emerged as the result of her actions in Amherst. food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. Regarding the cases that she had handled, the Massachusetts courts threw out every case in the Amherst lab during her tenure. She played as the starting guard for Portsmouth High Schools freshman team. Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. Such strong claims were too hasty at best, since investigators had not yet finished basic searches; three days later, police executed a warrant for a duffel bag they found stuffed behind Farak's desk. Penate's lawsuit, which seeks $5.7 million in damages, is believed to be one of the last remaining suits tied to the scandals; the statute of limitations to file such suits has expired. But unlike with Dookhan, there were no independent investigations of Farak or the Amherst lab. She was struggling to suppress mental health issues, depression in particular, and she tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. In 2017, a different judge ruled that Foster's actions constituted a "fraud upon the court," calling the letter "deliberately misleading." Two weeks after Ryans discovery, the Attorney Generals Office Penate and other defendants are asking see all of Fosters emails regarding Farak and other materials relating to the handling of evidence in the chemist's case. Please note that if your case has been identified for dismissal, it could take approximately 2-3 months for the relevant court records to be updated. Powered by. 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. This scandal has thrown thousands of drug cases into question, on top of more than 24,000 cases tainted by a scandal involving ex-chemist Annie Dookhan at the state's Hinton Lab in Jamaica Plain. After the Supreme Court's decision, a skeptical colleague started tracking how many microscope slides Dookhan used to test samples for cocaine. Among the papers they seized were handwritten worksheets Farak completed for drug-abuse therapy. motion on behalf of another client to see the evidence. The four years since Ryan discovered Farak's diaries have been a bitter fight over this question of culpabilitywhether Kaczmarek, Foster, and their colleagues were merely careless or whether they deliberately hid crucial evidence. This article originally appeared in print under the headline "The Chemists and the Cover-Up". 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. Perhaps, as criminal justice scandals inevitably emerge, we need to get more independent eyes on the evidence from the start. Nassif considered it a lapse in judgment, but not a disqualifying one; Nassif's boss didn't think it necessary to alert the prosecutors whose cases relied on the samples, much less the defendants. Joseph Ballou, lead investigator for the state police, called them the most important documents from the car. At the time of Penates trial, the state Attorney Generals Office contended Faraks misdeeds dated back only as far as 2012. She was also testifying in court while high. The last contact information provided by her, in response to Penates allegations, placed her residence in Hatfield, Massachusetts. 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. Shawn Musgrave Farak wasn't the first Massachusetts chemist to tamper with drug evidence. In court, she added that there was "no smoking gun" in the evidence. Instead, she submitted an intentionally vague letter to the judge claiming defense attorneys already had everything. When the Farak scandal erupted, that misconduct came into view. 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. Coakley assigned the case against Dookhan to Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek and her supervisor, John Verner. Velis said he stood by the findings. If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. Even before her arrest, the Department of Public Health had launched an internal inquiry into how such misconduct had gone undetected for such a long time. Each employee had a unique swipe card, but Farak simply used a physical key to get in after hours and on weekends. Netflix's latest true-crime series, How to Fix a Drug Scandal, dives deep into a shocking Massachusetts scandal, one that started in the humble confines of an underfunded drug testing lab and ended with an entire system in question. Penate was convicted in December 2013 and sentenced to serve five to seven years. In the eight and a half years she worked at the Hinton State Laboratory in Boston, her supervisors apparently never noticed she certified samples as narcotics without actually testing them, a type of fraud called "dry-labbing." Since her release, she has kept a low profile and managed to stay out of the public . The crucial fact of her longstanding and frequent drug use also never made it into Farak's trial, much less to defendants appealing convictions predicated on her tainted analyses. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. Netflix released a new docu-series called "How to Fix a Drug Scandal." In Farak's car, police found a "works kit"crack cocaine, a spatula, and copper mesh, often used as a pipe filter. Lost in the high drama of determining which individual prosecutors hid evidence was a more basic question: In scandals like these, why are decisions about evidence left to prosecutors at all? Dookhan's output remained implausibly high even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts (2009) that defendants were entitled to cross-examine forensic chemists about their analysis. In 2012, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court foundegregious prosecutorial misconduct after an assistant district attorney withheldevidence a judge had ordered him toproduce for the defense of a teenageraccused of statutory rape. In a letter filed with the Supreme Court, Julianne Nassif, a lab supervisor, wrote that Hinton had "appropriate quality control" measures. The governor didn't appoint the inspector general or anyone else to determine how long Farak was altering samples or running analyses while high. Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak. 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." Sonja Farak is in the grip of a rubbed-raw depression that hasn't responded to medication. A second unsealed report into allegations of wrongdoing by police and prosecutors who handled the Farak evidence, overseen by retired state judges Peter Velis and Thomas Merrigan, drew less attention. According to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Farak graduated with awards and distinctions. 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. Faraks therapist, Anna Kogan, wrote in her notes that Farak was worried about Nikki finding out about her addiction as well as the possible legal issues if she were ever caught. memo, Kaczmarek told her supervisors that "Farak's admissions on her 'emotional worksheets' recovered from her car detail her struggle with substance abuse. After Faraks arrest in 2013, police found pages of mental health worksheets in her car indicating she'd struggled with drug addiction since at least 2011. The lax security and regulations of the place and the negligent supervision of the employees and the stock of standards are the reasons why Farak was encouraged to do what she did. Why did she do that and where has it left her? Two detectives found Farak at a courthouse waiting to testify on an unrelated matter. 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 evidence to cover up her tracks. It's not as bad as Dookhan, they asserted and implied over and over. After her arrest, she received support from her parents, who showed up to her court appearances, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported. The cocaine, found in an unsealed, completed drug-testing kit, tested negativemeaning Farak had seemingly replaced the formerly "positive" drugs with falsified substances. Farak is amongst one of the 18 defendants battling the lawsuit filed by Rolando Penate. This immediately provoked questions about the thousands of cases in which her findings had contributed to the imprisonment of an individual. Due to the conviction, prosecutors were forced to dismiss more than . There is no allegation of misconduct against the local prosecutors who presented the case against Penate in Hampden County Superior Court. "Forensic evidence is not uniquely immune from the risk of manipulation," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority. Still, the state was acquiring evidence. Foster consulted Kaczmarek about the files contents, according to an Because state prosecutors hid Farak's substance abuse diaries, it took far too long for the full timeline of her crimes to become public. Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal Story: 5 Fast Facts. As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . 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. As extensively detailed in How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Farak was arrested on January 19, 2013. Lets find out. It was an astoundingly light touch for the second state chemist arrested in six months. A status hearing on Penate's suit, which was filed in 2017, is scheduled for July. Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education. Her answer: more than eight years before her arrest. ", Prosecutors maintained that Faraks rogue behavior spanned just a few months. When defense lawyers asked to see evidence for themselves, state prosecutors smeared them as pursuing a "fishing expedition.". On top of that, it was also ensured that no analyst would ever work without supervision. As federal food benefits decline, Mass. She started seeing a substance abuse therapist around this time. Approximately one year later, she pled guilty to tampering with evidence, unlawful possession, and stealing narcotics. It ultimately took a blatant violation to expose Dookhan, and even then her bosses twisted themselves in knots to hold on to their "super woman.". Powered by WordPress.com VIP. February 2013 email, to which he attached the worksheets. ", Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. Dookhan was sentenced to prison in 2013. Carr weaves Farak's story into that of another Massachusetts chemist, Annie Dookhan, who worked across the state at the Hinton drug lab in Boston. Farak signed Coakley's office finally launched a criminal investigation in July 2012, more than a year after the infraction was discovered by Dookhan's supervisors. The state's top court took an even harsher view, ruling in October 2018 that the attorney general's office as an institution was responsible for the prosecutorial misconduct of its former employees.
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