She started seeing a substance abuse therapist around this time. The criminal prosecution wasn't the only investigation of the Dookhan scandal. 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. When the Farak scandal erupted, that misconduct came into view. When she got married, it turned out that her wife, too, suffered from her own demons, and their collective anguish made Sonja desperate for a reprieve from this life. A few months before her arrest, Farak's counselor recommended in-patient rehab. For people with disabilities needing assistance with the Public Files, contact Glenn Heath at 617-300-3268. 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 gravity of the present case cannot be overstated," Kaczmarek wrote in her memo recommending a prison sentence of five to seven years. Thanks to Farak's testimony and those diary worksheets, we now know that, soon after joining the Amherst lab in 2004, Farak started skimming from the methamphetamine "standard," an undiluted oil used as a reference against which suspected meth samples are compared. At least 11,000 cases have already been dismissed due to fallout from the scandal, with thousands more likely to come. 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. With your support, GBH will continue to innovate, inspire and connect through reporting you value that meets todays moments. noted the mental health worksheets found in Faraks car, which had not been released. That settlement awaits approval by a judge. Soon after, the state police took over the control, and the lab was moved to Springfield, where it remains under the supervision of the state police. Listen Live: Classic and Contemporary Celtic, Listen Live: Cape, Coast and Islands NPR Station, Boston nonprofit Street2Ivy is producing this generation's entrepreneurs. Her wrongdoings were exposed when unsealed cocaine and a crack pipe were found under her desk. After graduating from Portsmouth High School, Farak attended the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she got a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry in 2000. The special hearing officer found Kaczmarek "displayed no remorse" and was "not candid" during the disciplinary proceedings. Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. Former chemist Annie Dookhan was convicted in 2013 on charges of improperly testing drug evidence at a drug lab in Boston. Foster and another assistant attorney general assented to that motion. Because she did so, Plaintiff served more than five years in a state prison.". It declined Farak's offer of a detailed confession in exchange for leniency, nixing the offer without even negotiating terms. "It was almost like Dookhan wanted to get caught," one of her former co-workers told state police in 2012. ", Prosecutors maintained that Faraks rogue behavior spanned just a few months. 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. motion with Hampden Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Kinder to see the evidence for himself. "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. He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." His report deemed Dookhan the "sole bad actor" at the lab, a finding that remains disputed in some circles. As extensively detailed in How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Farak was arrested on January 19, 2013. Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. A scandal erupts, raising questions for the thousands of defendants in her cases. As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents," Ryan wrote to the attorney general's office. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. Patrick appointed the state inspector general to look into it. Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal Story: 5 Fast Facts. | Investigators found that Sonja Farak tested drug samples and testified in court while under the influence of methamphetamines, ketamine, cocaine, LSD and other drugs between 2005 and 2013. 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. Lab's standards on a fairly regular basis beginning in late 2004 or early 2005," the attorney general's report notes in launching its recounting of the chemist's drug-taking journey . She had unrestricted access to the evidence room. Four months after Ryan found the worksheets, Judge Kinder | food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. State prosecutors gave Farak the immunity they had declined to grant two years earlier, then asked when she started analyzing samples while high. He also You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. "he didn't request a warrant. They pulled her aside as she walked back to the courthouse from her car, where she had smoked "a fair amount of crack" during her lunch break. You can try, Suspensions and a reprimand proposed for prosecutors admonished in drug lab scandal. 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. 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. It's not as bad as Dookhan, they asserted and implied over and over. 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. "The mental health worksheets constituted admissions by the state lab chemist assigned to analyze the samples seized in Plaintiffs case that she was stealing and using lab samples to feed a drug addiction at the time she was testing and certifying the samples in Plaintiffs case, including, in one instance, on the very day that she certified a sample," Robertson's ruling reads. Maybe fatigue made them sloppy, or perhaps they actively chose to look the other way as evidence piled up about the enormity of Farak's crimes. The case of Rolando Penate has become a leading example for lawyers calling for further investigation into alleged misconduct by prosecutors who handled documents seized from Sonja Farak, the Amherst crime-lab chemist convicted of stealing and tampering with drug samples. The defense bar also demanded answers on how such crucial evidence stayed buried for so long. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); NEXT: Zoning Makes the Green New Deal Impossible. Each employee had a unique swipe card, but Farak simply used a physical key to get in after hours and on weekends. 3.4.2023 8:00 AM, Reason Staff 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 whether anyone investigated her conduct during a brief stint working at the state's Boston drug lab is at . Ryan then filed a Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. At this point, Farakunlike Dookhandidn't admit anything. If Farak found a substance was a true drug, the person it was confiscated from could be convicted of a substance-related crime. 3.3.2023 5:30 PM, Joe Lancaster 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. 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 governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. Support GBH. This is merely a fishing expedition, Foster wrote in "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.". 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. Hearings could help decide how many of thousands of convictions tainted by Farak's testing may be overturned. 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. Judge Kinder denied Ryans motion. 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. She started doing drugs almost as soon as she took the job at Amherst, but it was after years of negligence on her superiors part that her actions finally came to light. 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.". But unlike with Dookhan, no one launched a bigger investigation of Farak. Sonja Farak is in the grip of a rubbed-raw depression that hasn't responded to medication. "We shouldn't be in the position of having to be saying, 'Don't close your eyes to the duration and scope of misconduct that may affect a whole lot of cases,'" the exasperated Massachusetts chief justice told prosecutors during oral arguments. In a letter filed with the Supreme Court, Julianne Nassif, a lab supervisor, wrote that Hinton had "appropriate quality control" measures. 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.". Farak signed After weeks of hearings, a "special hearing officer" selected by the board recommended potential sanctions against them all. Another worksheet had the month and weekdays for December 2011, which police easily could have determined by cross-referencing holidays or looking up a New England Patriots game mentioned in one entry. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility at GBH, Transparency in Coverage Cost-Sharing Disclosures. 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. In addition to ordering the dismissal of many thousands of cases, the Supreme Judicial Court directed a committee to draft a "checklist" for prosecutors, clarifying their obligation to turn over evidence to defendants. So, in a way, it is not from her that the queue of the blame should begin; it should be from the lab and the authorities themselves. As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. The place was closed as soon as Faraks crimes came to light. 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. denied Penates motion to dismiss the case, saying there was no evidence that Faraks misconduct extended to his case. Penate alleged Kaczmarek's actions violated his "Brady rights," which require prosecutors to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to defense counsel. 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. But a crucial issue was not before the court. 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. May 2003 started working in Hinton drug lab p. 14. 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. 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." Two detectives found Farak at a courthouse waiting to testify on an unrelated matter. In Farak's car, police found a "works kit"crack cocaine, a spatula, and copper mesh, often used as a pipe filter. "Dookhan's consistently high testing volumes should have been a clear indication that a more thorough analysis and review of her work was needed," an internal review found. After contemplating another suicide, she settled on drugs, and the fact that she had such easy access to it at her workplace made it easier for her to get lost in that world. The 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. After serving just a year of her 18 month sentence, Farak was released from prison in 2015. A Powerful EHR to Manage a Thriving Practice. "Please don't let this get more complicated than we thought," Kaczmarek replied when Ballou, the lead investigator, flagged irregularities in Farak's analysis in a case featuring pain pills. Farak wasn't the first Massachusetts chemist to tamper with drug evidence. Sonja Farak was a chemist at a state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 2005 to 2013. Kaczmarek argued the findings are subject to appeal. Ryan finally viewed the file in the attorney generals offices in October 2014. 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. Sonja Farak (Netflix) An ex-lab chemist Sonja Farak's negligence and misdeeds shocked US when she was arrested in 2013 for stealing and using drugs from the lab where she worked. "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. 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. 1. And when the tests she did run came back negative, Dookhan added controlled substances to the vials. | mentioned a New England Patriots game on Saturday, Dec. 24 which corresponded with a game date in 2011. 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. Exhausted from the ongoing scandal in Boston, state officials were desperate for damage control. On paper, these numbers made Dookhan the most productive chemist at Hinton; the next most productive averaged around 300 samples per month. Soon after Dookhan's arrest, Coakley's office asked the governor to order a broader independent probe of the Hinton lab. Prosecutors have an obligation to give the defense exculpatory evidence including anything that could weaken evidence against defendants. She soon crossed all these lines. 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. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015. 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. Joseph Ballou, lead investigator for the state police, called them the most important documents from the car. 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 . In the series, it's explained that Farak loved the energy the meth gave her. Its unclear if Farak is still with Lee, as they have both remained out of the public eye since the case. A status hearing on Penate's suit, which was filed in 2017, is scheduled for July. 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. It was. 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. answered that the state considered the evidence irrelevant to any case other than Faraks.. memo, Kaczmarek told her supervisors that "Farak's admissions on her 'emotional worksheets' recovered from her car detail her struggle with substance abuse. The number is 888-999-2881. . Emma Camp When she got married, it turned out that her wife, too, suffered from her own demons, and their collective anguish made Sonja desperate for a reprieve from this life. 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. The drug lab technician was sent to prison for 18 months, but was released in 2015. Sonja Farak in How to Fix a Drug Scandal. Despite such unequivocal findings of misconduct, the court removed language about Kaczmarek and Foster from notification letters to those whose cases have been dismissed, which will be sent out in early 2019. The prosecutors have been tied to the drug lab scandal involving disgraced former state chemist Sonja Farak, who admitted to stealing and using drugs from an Amherst state lab. Process Notes/Psychotherapy Notes Process notes are sometimes also referred to as psychotherapy notesthey're the notes you take during or after a session. 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. They were found with their packaging sliced open and their contents apparently altered. A year later, in October 2014, prosecutors relented, granting access to the full evidence in Farak's case to attorney Luke Ryan. The medical records stated that she did not have an existing drug problem that was amplified by her access to more substances. One of the reasons for the decrepit state and standard of the Amherst lab was the lack of funds. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. READ NEXT: Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal Story: 5 Fast Facts, Sonja Farak: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know, Please review our privacy policy here: https://heavy.com/privacy-policy/, Copyright 2023 Heavy, Inc. All rights reserved. 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. If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. It took another three years for the truth to emerge. Two weeks after Ryans discovery, the Attorney Generals Office Netflix released a new docu-series called "How to Fix a Drug Scandal." 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. In 2012, she began taking from co-workers' samples, forging intake forms and editing the lab database to cover her tracks. The former judges and the state police officers who helped them conducted a thorough review, said Emalie Gainey, spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey. Between the two women, 47,000 drug convictions and guilty pleas have been dismissed in the last two years, many for misdemeanor possession. TherapyNotes. Compromised drug samples often fit the definition. 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. Months after Farak pleaded guilty in January 2014, Ryan filed a After serving for 13 months, she was released on parole in 2015. Even the master's degree on her rsum was fabricated.
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