The criminal prosecution wasn't the only investigation of the Dookhan scandal. Farak worked under the influence of drugs for nine years - from 2004 to 2013 - before she was caught. Compromised drug samples often fit the definition. According to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Farak graduated with awards and distinctions. As Kaczmarek herself later observed, Farak essentially had "a drugstore at her disposal" from her first day at the Amherst lab. Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. There is nothing to indicate that the allegations against Farak date back to the time she tested the drugs in Penates case. Sonja Farak was a chemist for a state crime lab in Massachusetts. Chemist Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to "tampering with evidence" back in 2014 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the Amherst crime . In 2012, she began taking from co-workers' samples, forging intake forms and editing the lab database to cover her tracks. Relying on an investigation conducted by state police, the judges 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 December 2011, after police in Springfield, Mass., had arrested Renaldo Penate for allegedly selling heroin, the drugs from that case were tested at a state drug lab by technician Sonja Farak. Regarding the cases that she had handled, the Massachusetts courts threw out every case in the Amherst lab during her tenure. Why Won't Maryland Sell Me a Goddamn Beer? Privacy Policy | The fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. She was arrested in 2013 when the supervisor at the Amherst lab was made aware that two samples were missing. She even made her own crack in the lab. 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.". He didn't buy her quibbling that there's a difference between an explicit lie and obfuscation by grammar. 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. Name. She started seeing a substance abuse therapist around this time. One thing that How to Fix a Drug Scandal makes clear is that it wasnt all Sonja Faraks fault. 3.4.2023 8:00 AM, Reason Staff As extensively detailed in How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Farak was arrested on January 19, 2013. The newest true crime series from Netflix, How to Fix a Drug Scandal, was released on April 1, 2020. The Farak documents indicate she used drugs on the very day she certified samples as heroin in Penates case. Kaczmarek argued the findings are subject to appeal. 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. Kaczmarek has repeatedly testified she did not act intentionally and that she thought the worksheets had been turned over to the district attorneys who prosecuted the cases involved. Penate was convicted in December 2013 and sentenced to serve five to seven years. The place was closed as soon as Faraks crimes came to light. 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. Soon after Dookhan's arrest, Coakley's office asked the governor to order a broader independent probe of the Hinton lab. 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. It's been like this forever, or at least since girlhood. 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. Dookhan was now spending less time at her lab bench and more time testifying in court about her results. Officials recognized the worksheets for what they were: near-indisputable confessions. The new numbers appear in a report issued by a court-designated "Special Master." The disgraced chemist was sentenced to less than two years behind bars in 2014, following her guilty pleas for stealing cocaine from the lab. Exhausted from the ongoing scandal in Boston, state officials were desperate for damage control. She grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. The surveillance of the chemists as well as the standards and the confiscated drugs has also been increased considerably. How to Fix a Drug Scandal is an American true crime documentary miniseries that was released on Netflix on April 1, 2020. In court, she added that there was "no smoking gun" in the evidence. Process Notes/Psychotherapy Notes Process notes are sometimes also referred to as psychotherapy notesthey're the notes you take during or after a session. 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. ", The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. This threw every sample she had ever tested into question. And when the tests she did run came back negative, Dookhan added controlled substances to the vials. But she worried they might be privileged as health information. At the time of her arrest, she had resided in 37 Laurel Park in Northampton. Coakley's office finally launched a criminal investigation in July 2012, more than a year after the infraction was discovered by Dookhan's supervisors. In 2019, she was seen leaving the Springfield Federal Court but declined to comment on the status of the case. Investigators gave that information to Kaczmarek and the state AG's office,according tohearings before thestate board that disciplines attorneys. 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. concluded there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or obstruction of justice in matters related to the Farak case. It contained substances often used to make counterfeit cocaine, including soap, baking soda, candle wax, and modeling clay, plus lab dishes, wax paper, and fragments of a crack pipe. 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.". Verner, who testified that he didn't "micromanage" Kaczmarek, escaped criticism. 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. She had never quashed a subpoena before, but supervisors told her to fend off motions about Farak. She was struggling to suppress mental health issues, depression in particular, and she tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); NEXT: Zoning Makes the Green New Deal Impossible. Episode 2. As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. It declined Farak's offer of a detailed confession in exchange for leniency, nixing the offer without even negotiating terms. In the aftermath, the court felt it necessary to make clear that "no prosecutorhas the authority to decline to disclose exculpatory information.". But in a She was also testifying in court while high. 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. "Whether law enforcement officials overlooked these papers or intentionally suppressed them is a question for another day.". "The gravity of the present case cannot be overstated," Kaczmarek wrote in her memo recommending a prison sentence of five to seven years. 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. Joseph . 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. Still, the state was acquiring evidence. a certification of drug samples in Penates case on Dec. 22, 2011. Below is an outline of her charges. Velis said he stood by the findings. Instead, she submitted an intentionally vague letter to the judge claiming defense attorneys already had everything. If Farak found a substance was a true drug, the person it was confiscated from could be convicted of a substance-related crime. 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 cocaine, found in an unsealed, completed drug-testing kit, tested negativemeaning Farak had seemingly replaced the formerly "positive" drugs with falsified substances. Release year: 2020. Since then, she has kept a low profile. 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. ", In 2004, her first full year at the lab, Dookhan reported analyzing approximately 700 samples per month. Kaczmarek also oversaw the prosecution for the attorney general's office in that case. The information showed that Farak sought therapy for drug addiction and that her misconduct had been ongoing for years. A. Her notes record on-the-job drug use ranging from small nips of the lab's baseline. The Dookhan prosecution was barely underway, a grand jury having returned indictments a few weeks earlier. 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. The attorney general's representative at these hearings was Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster, a recent hire. But when the relevant police reports were released to defense attorneys, there was no mention of the diary entries' existence, much less that they went back so far. After her arrest, she received support from her parents, who showed up to her court appearances, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported. When the Farak scandal erupted, that misconduct came into view. Her answer: more than eight years before her arrest. Get all the latest from Sanditon on GBH Passport, How one Brookline studio helps artists with disabilities thrive. 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. ", Officials rushed to downplay the situation in Amherst. Tens of thousands of criminal drug cases were dismissed as a result of misconduct by Dookhan and Farak. She had unrestricted access to the evidence room. (Netflix) A former state chemist, Sonja Farak, made headlines in 2013 when she was arrested for stealing and using drugs from a laboratory. Though. And both pose the obvious question about how chemists could behave so badly for years without detection. The next month, Ryan asked again. Ryan then filed a Here are those forms with the admissions of drug use I was talking about," a state police sergeant wrote to Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek, who led Faraks prosecution, in a Investigators either missed or declined opportunities to dig very deep. | 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. You can try, Suspensions and a reprimand proposed for prosecutors admonished in drug lab scandal. 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. The drug lab technician was sent to prison for 18 months, but was released in 2015. "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents, Ryan 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. A drug chemist . 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. In Farak's car, police found a "works kit"crack cocaine, a spatula, and copper mesh, often used as a pipe filter. 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. According to a newspaper article from 1992, she was the first female in Rhode Island to be on a high school football team. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. 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. Netflix released a new docu-series called "How to Fix a Drug Scandal." This was not true, as Nassif's department later conceded. He also Meanwhile, other top prosecutors, including Coakley, largely escaped criticism for their collective failure to hand over evidence that they were bound by constitutional mandate to share with defendants. Talking Politics: Should a new government agency protect the coastline from climate change? 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.". At least 11,000 cases have already been dismissed due to fallout from the scandal, with thousands more likely to come. How to Fix A Drug Scandal takes a one-woman issue in a crumbling police drug lab and follows the way it blew up an entire legal system. She recovered, made it through college and got a job as a chemist at the Amherst Crime Lab, where she tested confiscated drugs. They tend to be more freeform notes about the session and your impressions of the client's statements and demeanour. 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. After weeks of hearings, a "special hearing officer" selected by the board recommended potential sanctions against them all. Months after Farak pleaded guilty in January 2014, Ryan filed a 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." Farak is amongst one of the 18 defendants battling the lawsuit filed by Rolando Penate. A local prosecutor also asked Ballou to look into a case Farak had tested as far back as 2005. Farak admitted in testimony that she began using drugs almost as soon as she started working at the Massachusetts State Crime Lab in Amherst. 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. As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . Farak's reports were central to thousands of cases, and the fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into "urge-ful" samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. 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. Where is Sonja now? Before her sentencing, Farak failed a drug test while out on bail, according to Mass Live. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the Amherst lab in 2004. Penate is seeking a new trial, contending the conviction should be reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct and evidence tainted by Farak. 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. 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. Even as they filed numerous motions for information about how long Farak had been using drugs, the defense attorneys had no idea these worksheets existed. "It was Defendant who had the responsibility within the AGO [attorney general's office] to see that the Farak investigation materials were disseminated to the DAOs [district attorneys' offices]," Robertson wrote, adding there is no evidence anyone from the attorney general's office sent the potentially exculpatory evidence to those offices.". Deval Patrick's office didn't learn about the protocol breach until December 2011. On a Friday afternoon in January 2013, a call came in to Coakley's office: "We have another Annie Dookhan out west.". 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." Her wrongdoings were exposed when unsealed cocaine and a crack pipe were found under her desk. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility at GBH, Transparency in Coverage Cost-Sharing Disclosures. motion on behalf of another client to see the evidence. "If she were suffering from back injurymaybe she took some oxys?" She was sentenced to 18 months in jail plus five years of probation. "Because on almost a daily basis Farak abused narcoticsthere is no assurance that she was able to perform chemical analysis correctly," the judge found. 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. "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. When defense lawyers asked to see evidence for themselves, state prosecutors smeared them as pursuing a "fishing expedition.". Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education. email highlighted in the Velis-Merrigan report. 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. 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. But Ryan, who represented Penate, suspected it was more extensive. For people with disabilities needing assistance with the Public Files, contact Glenn Heath at 617-300-3268. Meier put the number at 40,323 defendants, though some have called that an overestimate. 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. 3.3.2023 5:45 PM, Jacob Sullum The number is 888-999-2881. In November 2013, Dookhan pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, and perjury. 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. | As he leafed through three boxes of evidence, he found the substance abuse worksheets and diaries. noted the mental health worksheets found in Faraks car, which had not been released. This not only led to people getting a reprieve from prison but also filing their own lawsuits against the injustice they had to suffer. Instead, Kaczmarek provided copies to Farak's own attorney and asked that all evidence from Farak's car, including the worksheets, be kept away from prying defense attorneys representing the thousands of people convicted of drug crimes based on Farak's work. motion with Hampden Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Kinder to see the evidence for himself. Farak. "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. As . 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. At some point, the attorney general's office stopped chasing leads entirely. One was clearly dated November 16, 2011a year and two months before her arrest. Although the year she wrote the notes wasnt listed on the worksheet, in the six years prior to her arrest, 2011 is the only year in which Dec. 22 fell on a Thursday. 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. Mucha gente que vio el programa se pregunta: dnde est Sonja Farak ahora? El 6 de enero de 2014, Farak se declar culpable de los cargos en su contra. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the lab.