"Going to use phentermine," she wrote on another, "but when I went to take it, I saw how little (v. little) there is left = ended up not using. In the series, it's explained that Farak loved the energy the meth gave her. 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. ", Officials rushed to downplay the situation in Amherst. She was sentenced in 2014 to 18 months in prison and 5 years of probation. 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. 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. . Cleverly omitting pronouns, she wrote that "after reviewing" the file, "every documenthas been disclosed." Powered by WordPress.com VIP. 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.". Having barely investigated her, prosecutors indicted Farak only for the samples in her possession the day she was caught. This threw every sample she had ever tested into question. Coakley did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. Investigators gave that information to Kaczmarek and the state AG's office,according tohearings before thestate board that disciplines attorneys. "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents, Ryan As . Thank you! Emma Camp The Farak scandal came as the state grappled with another drug lab crisis. Sonja Farak is in the grip of a rubbed-raw depression that hasn't responded to medication. Kaczmarek quoted the worksheets in a memo to her supervisor, Verner, and others, summarizing that they revealed Farak's "struggle with substance abuse." 3.3.2023 4:50 PM, 2022 Reason Foundation | 3.3.2023 5:30 PM, Joe Lancaster email highlighted in the Velis-Merrigan report. It was an astoundingly light touch for the second state chemist arrested in six months. This is merely a fishing expedition, Foster wrote in 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. On the surface, their crimes dont seem as injurious and they dont seem to enjoy inflicting pain on others. Faraks wife had her own mental health problems, and according to Rolling Stone, Farak would have conflict with her wife every night at home. Penate is seeking a new trial, contending the conviction should be reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct and evidence tainted by Farak. B. ut when Penates lawyer tried to obtain the documents not certain what was in them before his clients 2013 trial, he was rebuffed by state prosecutors who said the papers were irrelevant according to emails included in investigative reports unsealed earlier this month. 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. Instead, Coakley's office served as gatekeeper to evidence that could have untangled the scandal and freed thousands of people from prison and jail years earlier, or at least wiped their improper convictions off the books. At least 11,000 cases have already been dismissed due to fallout from the scandal, with thousands more likely to come. She played as the starting guard for Portsmouth High Schools freshman team. 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. "Because on almost a daily basis Farak abused narcoticsthere is no assurance that she was able to perform chemical analysis correctly," the judge found. "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. On paper, these numbers made Dookhan the most productive chemist at Hinton; the next most productive averaged around 300 samples per month. Sonja Farak was a chemist at a state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 2005 to 2013. The attorney general's representative at these hearings was Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster, a recent hire. At some point, the attorney general's office stopped chasing leads entirely. According to a newspaper article from 1992, she was the first female in Rhode Island to be on a high school football team. memo to Judge Kinder the next week, Foster said she reviewed the file, and said every document in it had already been disclosed. 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. She grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. Join us. Farak struggled with mental health throughout her life, the documentary series explains. Several defense attorneys who called for the Velis-Merrigan investigation say the former judges and their state police investigators got it wrong. Sonja Farak, a state forensic chemist in western Massachusetts, was minutes away from testifying in a drug case in early 2013 when attorneys learned she was about to be arrested on charges of. Regarding the cases that she had handled, the Massachusetts courts threw out every case in the Amherst lab during her tenure. "These drugswere tested fairly," Coakley claimed the day after Farak's arrest. "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents," Ryan wrote to the attorney general's office. 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. The Attorney Generals Office, Velis and Merrigan and the state police declined to answer questions about the handling of the Farak evidence. 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. But she worried they might be privileged as health information. 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. 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. Maybe it's not a matter of checklists or reminders that prosecutors have to keep their eyes open for improprieties. From the April 2023 issue, Billy Binion In 2012, she began taking from co-workers' samples, forging intake forms and editing the lab database to cover her tracks. Since her release, she has kept a low profile and managed to stay out of the public . Local prosecutors also remained in the dark. And then the bigger investigation was going to be someone else.". Her role was to test for the presence of illegal substances, which could be instrumental in thousands of . The governor didn't appoint the inspector general or anyone else to determine how long Farak was altering samples or running analyses while high. A federal judge has rejected claims from an embattled former state prosecutor that she is protected from liability in the fallout over a Massachusetts drug lab scandal. concluded there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or obstruction of justice in matters related to the Farak case. The Netflix docuseries ends by acknowledging that Farak received an 18-month sentence, and that defense attorney Luke Ryan was able . 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. Farak was arrested the next day, and the attorney general's office assigned the case to Anne Kaczmarek. Thus, only defendants whose evidence she tested in the six-month window before her arrest could challenge their cases. "If she were suffering from back injurymaybe she took some oxys?" Defense lawyers doubled down on challenges to every case she might have taintednot just her own, which district attorneys ultimately agreed to dismiss, but also her co-workers', based on Farak's admission that she stole from other chemists' samples. Magistrate Judge Robertson denied a request in Penate's lawsuit that Kaczmarek be prohibited from contesting the special hearing officer's findings. Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal tells the story of two women whose actions brought to light the negligence of the system that is supposed to deliver justice to everyone. The hotline is open Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. 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. Farak was released from prison in 2015 and has kept a low profile since. She was also under the influence when she took the stand during her trial. Soon after Dookhan's arrest, Coakley's office asked the governor to order a broader independent probe of the Hinton lab. Her ar-rest led to the dismissal of thousands of drug cases in Massachusetts. She recovered, made it through college and got a job as a chemist at the Amherst Crime Lab, where she tested confiscated drugs. 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. She soon crossed all these lines. It was. The staff in the new lab was also doubled, and the number of trainees was also increased. 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. She started seeing a substance abuse therapist around this time. State prosecutors gave Farak the immunity they had declined to grant two years earlier, then asked when she started analyzing samples while high. food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. "It was almost like Dookhan wanted to get caught," one of her former co-workers told state police in 2012. They say court records and newly released emails show prosecutors sat on evidence they were familiar with that pointed to Faraks drug use in 2011, when she worked on Penates case. 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? This immediately provoked questions about the thousands of cases in which her findings had contributed to the imprisonment of an individual. She had unrestricted access to the evidence room. Both scandals undercut confidence in the criminal justice system and the validity of forensic analysis. 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 . Poetically, that landmark case originated from the Hinton lab, although Dookhan didn't conduct the analysis in question. 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. (Conveniently, they also found a Patriots schedule from 2011 in the car.). GBH News brings you the stories, local voices, and big ideas that shape our world. Mucha gente que vio el programa se pregunta: dnde est Sonja Farak ahora? One thing that How to Fix a Drug Scandal makes clear is that it wasnt all Sonja Faraks fault. Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. 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. Instead, she submitted an intentionally vague letter to the judge claiming defense attorneys already had everything. At this point, Farakunlike Dookhandidn't admit anything. Investigators either missed or declined opportunities to dig very deep. In four 50-minute episodes, Netflix's latest shocker tells the story of Sonia Farak, a chemist who worked at a crime lab in Amherst, Massachusetts. The medical records stated that she did not have an existing drug problem that was amplified by her access to more substances. 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. Gioia called for evidentiary hearings so prosecutors can be asked about what they knew, when they knew it, and what they did with their knowledge., Luke Ryan, Penates trial lawyer, said that the state police officers working on the report failed to obtain an appropriate understanding of the events that transpired before they were assigned to this investigation.". "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.". She was also testifying in court while high. They were found with their packaging sliced open and their contents apparently altered. It's been like this forever, or at least since girlhood. The new numbers appear in a report issued by a court-designated "Special Master." Officials recognized the worksheets for what they were: near-indisputable confessions. At the time of her arrest, she had resided in 37 Laurel Park in Northampton. 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. Democratic Gov. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the Amherst lab in 2004. 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. Former chemist Annie Dookhan was convicted in 2013 on charges of improperly testing drug evidence at a drug lab in Boston. As extensively detailed in How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Farak was arrested on January 19, 2013. 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. Chemist Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to "tampering with evidence" back in 2014 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. "No reasonable individual could have failed to appreciate the unlawfulness of [Kaczmarek's] actions in these circumstances," Robertson wrote in her ruling. Powered by. 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.". Hearings could help decide how many of thousands of convictions tainted by Farak's testing may be overturned. State officials rushed to condemn her loudly and publicly. 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. 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. The attorney general's officeKaczmarek or her supervisorscould have asked a judge to determine whether the worksheets were actually privileged, as Kaczmarek later acknowledged. 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. After serving just a year of her 18 month sentence, Farak was released from prison in 2015. 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.". Since then, she has kept a low profile. 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. 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. For people with disabilities needing assistance with the Public Files, contact Glenn Heath at 617-300-3268. Patrick said "the most important take-home" was that "no individual's due process rights were compromised.". Ryan finally viewed the file in the attorney generals offices in October 2014. wrote she "tried to resist using @ work, but ended up failing." Disgraced drug lab chemist Sonja Farak emerges as her own attorney as defendant in $5.7 million federal lawsuit. Over time, Farak's drug use turned to cocaine, LSD and, eventually, crack. The governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. She is not active on any social media platform and has kept her distance from the press. It's not as bad as Dookhan, they asserted and implied over and over. Yet Dookhan's brazen crimes went undetected for ages. 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. Meier put the number at 40,323 defendants, though some have called that an overestimate. "he didn't request a warrant. 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. 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 . Dookhan had seeded public mistrust in the criminal justice system, which "now becomes an issue in every criminal trial for every defendant.". 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. Inwardly though, Sonja Farak was striving. As Kaczmarek herself later observed, Farak essentially had "a drugstore at her disposal" from her first day at the Amherst lab. 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. To multiple courts' amazement, her incessant drug use never caught the attention of her co-workers. The Amherst lab had called state police when the two missing samples were noticed in 2013. 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. Foster protested that portions of the evidentiary file in question might be privileged or not subject to disclosure. Foster and another assistant attorney general assented to that motion. This very well could have been the end of the investigative trail but for a few stubborn defense lawyers, who appealed the ruling. 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. | And yet, due to their actions, they did injure people and they did inflict a lot of pain, not just on a couple of people, but on thousands. But why were a small handful of prosecutors allowed total control over evidence about one of the worst criminal justice failures in recent memory? The place was closed as soon as Faraks crimes came to light. 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. In 2017, a different judge ruled that Foster's actions constituted a "fraud upon the court," calling the letter "deliberately misleading." Due to the conviction, prosecutors were forced to dismiss more than . 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. She had never quashed a subpoena before, but supervisors told her to fend off motions about Farak. Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education. 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. 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. Dookhan was sentenced to prison in 2013. As the state's top court put it, the criminal investigation into Farak was "cursory at best.". Where is Sonja now? As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. 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. Foster Many more are likely to follow, with the total expected to exceed 50,000. Why did she do that and where has it left her? There is nothing to indicate that the allegations against Farak date back to the time she tested the drugs in Penates case. Who is Sonja Farak? We couldn't do it without you. Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. 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.