Farak saw Kogan in 2009 and 2010, and her therapist wrote: She obtains the drugs from her job at the state drug lab, by taking portions of samples that have come in to be tested., Kogan also wrote that Farak told her she had taken methamphetamines at another lab in an old job, but she didnt get much from it. Kogan wrote that after moving to western [Massachusetts] for her job at the state drug lab, [Farak] tried it again and really liked it. She tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. 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. 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. 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. There is nothing to indicate that the allegations against Farak date back to the time she tested the drugs in Penates case. The last contact information provided by her, in response to Penates allegations, placed her residence in Hatfield, Massachusetts. Because she did so, Plaintiff served more than five years in a state prison.". Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. Her role was to test for the presence of illegal substances, which could be instrumental in thousands of . Psychotherapy Progress Notes, as shown above, can be populated using clinical codes before they are linked with a client's appointments for easier admin and use in sessions. As Kaczmarek herself later observed, Farak essentially had "a drugstore at her disposal" from her first day at the Amherst lab. 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 . Joseph . Out of "an abundance of caution," Kaczmarek didn't present them to the grand jury that was convened to determine whether to indict Farak. ", Prosecutors nationwide pretty uniformly backed this argument, which the Supreme Court rejected in a 54 opinion. Farak was released from prison in 2015 and has kept a low profile since. His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. Cleverly omitting pronouns, she wrote that "after reviewing" the file, "every documenthas been disclosed." Kaczmarek had obtained the evidence at issue while she was prosecuting Farak on state charges of tampering with evidence and drug possession. You can check your records electronically by following this link: https://icori.chs.state.ma.us. After serving for 13 months, she was released on parole in 2015. "Whether law enforcement officials overlooked these papers or intentionally suppressed them is a question for another day.". Farak was arrested the next day, and the attorney general's office assigned the case to Anne Kaczmarek. Since the takeover, the budget for all forensic labs across the state has been increased, by around twenty-five per cent. And when the tests she did run came back negative, Dookhan added controlled substances to the vials. Lets find out. 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. It's been like this forever, or at least since girlhood. A hearing on their motions is scheduled next month. The show also delves into the issues of the state in discovering and reporting on the extent of the cases that were affected by Faraks actions. Subscribe to Reason Roundup, a wrap up of the last 24 hours of news, delivered fresh each morning. The Attorney Generals Office, Velis and Merrigan and the state police declined to answer questions about the handling of the Farak evidence. Shown results suggesting otherwise, she copped to contaminating samples "a few times" during the previous "two to three years.". In 2014, former Amherst drug lab chemist Sonja Farak was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison after it was discovered that she stole and used drugs that she was entrusted to test. Magistrate Judge Robertson denied a request in Penate's lawsuit that Kaczmarek be prohibited from contesting the special hearing officer's findings. She even made her own crack in the lab. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. denied Penates motion to dismiss the case, saying there was no evidence that Faraks misconduct extended to his case. 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. Like Hinton, the Amherst lab had no cameras. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the lab. State prosecutors hadnt provided this evidence to other district attorneys offices contending with the Farak fallout, either. More than 24,000 convictions in 16,449 cases tainted by former state chemist Sonja Farak have been dismissed in a court case brought by the ACLU of Massachusetts, the Committee of Public Counsel Services (CPCS), and law firm Fick & Marx LLP. The Amherst Bulletin reported that her medical records indicated that she only became addicted to drugs once she started working at the lab, in 2004. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. She grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. To multiple courts' amazement, her incessant drug use never caught the attention of her co-workers. ", The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. Judge Kinder denied Ryans motion. Farak apparently still tested each caseunlike Annie Dookhan, another Massachusetts chemist who was arrested five months prior to Farak for fabricating test results. Two drug lab chemists' shocking crimes cripple a state's judicial system and blur the lines of justice for lawyers, officials and thousands of inmates. Farak was a former lab chemist at a lab in Amherst, Massachusetts and was convicted of stealing and using drugs from the lab where she worked. 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.". But in a Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. Over the next four years, Farak consumed nearly all of it. Below is an outline of her charges. ", In 2004, her first full year at the lab, Dookhan reported analyzing approximately 700 samples per month. YouTube Four months after Ryan found the worksheets, Judge Kinder As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. At some point, the attorney general's office stopped chasing leads entirely. ", Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. ordered a report on the history of her illicit behavior. Dookhan's transgressions got more press attention: Her story broke first, she immediately confessed, and her misdeeds took place in big-city Boston rather than the western reaches of the state. Farak as a young. motion on behalf of another client to see the evidence. Coakley's office finally launched a criminal investigation in July 2012, more than a year after the infraction was discovered by Dookhan's supervisors. mentioned a New England Patriots game on Saturday, Dec. 24 which corresponded with a game date in 2011. | And then the bigger investigation was going to be someone else.". Obviously, after a blunder of such scale, no one would want their samples checked from the same lab. In the only quasi-independent probe of the Farak scandal ever ordered, Attorney General Healey and a district attorney appointed two retired judges to investigate in summer 2015. Two weeks after Ryans discovery, the Attorney Generals Office She's no longer in prison, as Farak has served her sentence. Mucha gente que vio el programa se pregunta: dnde est Sonja Farak ahora? memo, Kaczmarek told her supervisors that "Farak's admissions on her 'emotional worksheets' recovered from her car detail her struggle with substance abuse. In Farak's car, police found a "works kit"crack cocaine, a spatula, and copper mesh, often used as a pipe filter. Our streamlined software is accessible wherever and whenever you . Listen Live: Classic and Contemporary Celtic, Listen Live: Cape, Coast and Islands NPR Station, Boston nonprofit Street2Ivy is producing this generation's entrepreneurs. Before her sentencing, Farak failed a drug test while out on bail, according to Mass Live. Biden Embraces the Fearmongering, Vows To Squash D.C.'s Mild Criminal Justice Reforms, The Flap Over Biden's Comment About 2 Fentanyl Deaths Obscures Prohibition's Role in Causing Them, Conservatives Turn Further Against WarExcept Maybe With Mexico. State officials rushed to condemn her loudly and publicly. The court also dismissed all meth cases processed at the lab since Farak started in 2004. 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. Many more are likely to follow, with the total expected to exceed 50,000. 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. May 2003 started working in Hinton drug lab p. 14. The drug lab technician was sent to prison for 18 months, but was released in 2015. 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. "These drugswere tested fairly," Coakley claimed the day after Farak's arrest. "No reasonable individual could have failed to appreciate the unlawfulness of [Kaczmarek's] actions in these circumstances," Robertson wrote in her ruling. The scandal led. Emma Camp 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. On the surface, their crimes dont seem as injurious and they dont seem to enjoy inflicting pain on others. Farak received a sentence of 18 months in jail and 5 years of probation. During the next four years, she would periodically sober up and then relapse. The Netflix docuseries ends by acknowledging that Farak received an 18-month sentence, and that defense attorney Luke Ryan was able . Patrick said "the most important take-home" was that "no individual's due process rights were compromised.". Though. 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. 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. Talking Politics: Should a new government agency protect the coastline from climate change? "The gravity of the present case cannot be overstated," Kaczmarek wrote in her memo recommending a prison sentence of five to seven years. 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. Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. Sgt. Dookhan had seeded public mistrust in the criminal justice system, which "now becomes an issue in every criminal trial for every defendant.". Most important, they found seven worksheets from Farak's substance abuse therapy. This is the story of Farak's drug-induced wrongdoings, and it's the. concluded there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or obstruction of justice in matters related to the Farak case. Sonja Farak was a chemist at a state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 2005 to 2013. 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. It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015. Follow us so you don't miss a thing! If they'd kept digging, defendants might still have learned the crucial facts. 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. Accessibility | At the very least, we expected that we would get everything they collected in their case against Farak. Flannery, now in private practice, said the substance abuse worksheets are clearly relevant to defendants challenging Faraks analysis. On another worksheet chronicling her struggle not to use, she described 12 of the next 13 samples assigned to her for testing as "urge-ful.". Former chemist Annie Dookhan was convicted in 2013 on charges of improperly testing drug evidence at a drug lab in Boston. Fortunately, the courts largely ignored this shallow investigation. And so, when she pleaded guilty in January 2014, Farak got what one attorney called "de facto immunity." It declined Farak's offer of a detailed confession in exchange for leniency, nixing the offer without even negotiating terms. How to Fix a Drug Scandal: With Shannon O'Neill, Karl Kenzler, Paul Solotaroff, Scott Allen. She is not active on any social media platform and has kept her distance from the press. 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. The cocaine, found in an unsealed, completed drug-testing kit, tested negativemeaning Farak had seemingly replaced the formerly "positive" drugs with falsified substances. The civil lawsuit was one of the last tied to prosecutors' disputed handling of the case against disgraced ex-chemist Sonja Farak, who was convicted in 2014 of ingesting drug samples she was. The premise revolves around documentary filmmaker Erin Lee Carr following the effects of crime drug lab chemists Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan and their tampering with evidence and its aftereffects.. Dookhan was accused of forging reports and tampering with samples to . 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. Investigators gave that information to Kaczmarek and the state AG's office,according tohearings before thestate board that disciplines attorneys. In fall 2013, a Springfield, Massachusetts, judge convened hearings with the explicit aim of establishing "the timing and scope" of Farak's "alleged criminal conduct.". A judge sentenced Dookhan to three years in prison; she was granted parole in April 2016. Chemist Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to "tampering with evidence" back in 2014 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Poetically, that landmark case originated from the Hinton lab, although Dookhan didn't conduct the analysis in question. With the Dookhan case so fresh, reporters immediately labeled Farak "the second chemist. Over time, Farak's drug use turned to cocaine, LSD and, eventually, crack. Due to the conviction, prosecutors were forced to dismiss more than . Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal Story: 5 Fast Facts. A final decision is still pending and must be approved by the state Supreme Judicial Court. shipped nearly 300 pages of previously undisclosed materials to local prosecutors around the state. another filing. . Martha Coakley, then attorney general for the state, argued in Melendez-Diaz that a chemist's certificate contains only "neutral, objective facts." Join us. "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. "First, of course, are the defendants, who when charged in the criminal justice system have the right to expect that they will be given due process and there will be fair and accurate information used in any prosecution against them." Penate's suit said Kaczmarek withheld evidence that Farak used drugs at the lab for longer than the Massachusetts attorney general's office first claimed, and that he would not have been imprisoned based on tainted evidence. Between 2005 and 2013, Sonja Farak was performing laboratory tests at a state drug lab in Amherst while under the influence of narcotics. The criminal prosecution wasn't the only investigation of the Dookhan scandal. She said, It was about coping; it certainly wasnt about having fun; I dont think shes had fun in quite a while.. According to an Attorney General Offices report, Farak attended Temple University in Philadelphia for graduate school, which is where she became a recreational drug user. Prosecutors have an obligation to give the defense exculpatory evidence including anything that could weaken evidence against defendants. "I remember actually sitting on the stand and looking at it," Farak said of her first time swiping from evidence in a trafficking case, "knowing that I had analyzed the sample and that I had then tampered with it.". Sonja Farak was a chemist for a state crime lab in Massachusetts. Defense attorneys had. State prosecutors gave Farak the immunity they had declined to grant two years earlier, then asked when she started analyzing samples while high. noted the mental health worksheets found in Faraks car, which had not been released. Farak signed As How to Fix a Drug Scandal explores, Farak had long struggled with her mental . ", Officials rushed to downplay the situation in Amherst. 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. "No reasonablejury could conclude that this evidence is not favorable.". This article originally appeared in print under the headline "The Chemists and the Cover-Up". Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. Sonja Farak is at the center of Netflix's new true crime docuseries, How To Fix a Drug Scandal. Thus, only defendants whose evidence she tested in the six-month window before her arrest could challenge their cases. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. The next month, Ryan asked again. The charges against Penate were dismissed after Farak's conviction. 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. Where Is Sonja Farak Now? The lone dissenting justice called the decision "too little and too late" and argued that the severity of the scandal required tossing all the cases. 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. Coakley assigned the case against Dookhan to Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek and her supervisor, John Verner. | She started seeing a substance abuse therapist around this time. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015 Contributed by Shawn Musgrave (Musgrave Investigations) p. 1. 2. 3.3.2023 5:30 PM, Joe Lancaster They were found with their packaging sliced open and their contents apparently altered. She recovered, made it through college and got a job as a chemist at the Amherst Crime Lab, where she tested confiscated drugs. The court decided to uphold a ruling dismissing charges against the defendant, a juvenile at the time of the alleged offense identified only as Washington W. The justices didnt name his prosecutor, David Omiunu, who was identified by The Eye from other court records. 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. 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. The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the Amherst crime . It was. Terms Of Use, (Annie Dookhan (left) and Sonja Farak, Associated Press). In the series, it's explained that Farak loved the energy the meth gave her. Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education. 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." The fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. 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? Penate alleged Kaczmarek's actions violated his "Brady rights," which require prosecutors to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to defense counsel. From the March 2019 issue, "Tried to resist using @ work, but ended up failing," the forensic chemist scribbled on a diary worksheet she kept as part of her substance abuse therapy. "I suspect that if another entity was in the mix"perhaps the inspector general or an independent investigator"the Attorney General's Office would have treated the Farak case much more seriously and would have been much more reluctant to hide the ball," Ryan writes in an email. She married Lee after starting her job, but their marriage was rocky. Foster's first stepper ethical obligations and office protocolshould have been to look through the evidence to see what had already been handed over. 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. Among the papers they seized were handwritten worksheets Farak completed for drug-abuse therapy. Two detectives found Farak at a courthouse waiting to testify on an unrelated matter. Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. To better estimate how many convictions will have to be reviewed because of Farak, the Supreme Judicial Court Where is Sonja now? In a letter filed with the Supreme Court, Julianne Nassif, a lab supervisor, wrote that Hinton had "appropriate quality control" measures. They were all rendered unacceptable. Coakley did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. She had unrestricted access to the evidence room. For people with disabilities needing assistance with the Public Files, contact Glenn Heath at 617-300-3268. Sonja Farak. Not only did they not turn these documents over, but I wasnt aware that they existed, said Frank Flannery, who was the Hampden County assistant district attorney assigned to appeals following Faraks arrest. What Did Sonja Farak Do, Exactly? (Conveniently, they also found a Patriots schedule from 2011 in the car.). He recommended she lose her law license for two years; the Office of Bar Counsel later argued Kaczmarek should be disbarred. Ryan then filed a Farak worked for the Amherst Drug Lab in Massachusetts for 9 years when she was convicted of stealing and using them. He also "It is critical that all parties have unquestioned faith in that process from the beginning so that they will have full confidence in the conclusions drawn at the end," Coakley said. In June 2017, following hearings in which Kaczmarek, Foster, Verner, and others took the stand, a judge found that Kaczmarek and Foster together "piled misrepresentation upon misrepresentation to shield the mental health worksheets from disclosure.". Its no big deal, 14-year-old Farak said to the Panama City News Herald. Approximately one year later, she pled guilty to tampering with evidence, unlawful possession, and stealing narcotics. During her trial, her defense lawyer Elaine Pourinski said that Farak wasnt taking drugs to party, but instead to control her depression. But she insisted the drugs didn't compromise her worka belief that one judge would aptly declare "belies logic.". In a rare move, the judicial office that brings disciplinary cases against lawyers in Massachusetts has accused a prosecutor of professional misconduct, including allegations that she failed to share critical information with defense lawyers and attempted to interfere with defense witnesses.