She was released in 2015, as reported by Mass Live. And so, when she pleaded guilty in January 2014, Farak got what one attorney called "de facto immunity." It included information about the type of drugs she tampered with. That settlement awaits approval by a judge. Sonja Farak was a chemist for a state crime lab in Massachusetts. 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. "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. Without even interviewing Foster, they determined there was "no evidence" of obstruction of justice by her, by Kaczmarek, or by any state prosecutor. Yet Dookhan's brazen crimes went undetected for ages. Given the account that Farak was a law-abiding citizen, it is questioned as to how an 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. 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 Her role was to test for the presence of illegal substances, which could be instrumental in thousands of . ", Prosecutors maintained that Faraks rogue behavior spanned just a few months. She also starting dipping into police-submitted samples, a "whole other level of morality," as Farak called it during a fall 2015 special grand jury session. When defense lawyers asked to see evidence for themselves, state prosecutors smeared them as pursuing a "fishing expedition.". 3.3.2023 4:50 PM, 2022 Reason Foundation | Episode 2. "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. Her medical records included notes from Faraks therapist in Amherst, Anna Kogan. 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. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. Deborah Becker Twitter Host/ReporterDeborah Becker is a senior correspondent and host at WBUR. 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. | "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 was sentenced to 18 months in jail plus five years of probation. another filing. ", In 2004, her first full year at the lab, Dookhan reported analyzing approximately 700 samples per month. 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. And when defense attorneys tried to do it themselves, Coakley's office blocked their efforts. Foster consulted Kaczmarek about the files contents, according to an Defense attorneys had. Over time, Farak's drug use turned to cocaine, LSD and, eventually, crack. Fue arrestada el 19 de enero de 2013. 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. "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. According to the notes, Farak thought it gave her energy, helped her to get things done and not procrastinate, feel more positive., Her partner Nikki Lee testified before a grand jury that she herself had tried cocaine, that she had observed Farak using cocaine in 2000, and that she had marijuana in her house when police officers arrived to search the premises as part of their investigation of Farak., In Faraks testimony during a grand jury investigation, she said that she became a recreational drug user during graduate school and used cocaine, marihuana, and ecstasy. She also said she used heroin one time and was nervous and sick and hated every minute of it [and had] no desire to use [it] again., Farak met and settled down with Nikki Lee in her 20s. As . 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. She was sentenced in 2014 to 18 months in prison and 5 years of probation. Massachusetts prosecutors withheld evidence of corrupt state narcotics testing for months from a defendant facing drug charges, and didnt release it until after his conviction, according to newly surfaced documents and emails. If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. Perhaps, as criminal justice scandals inevitably emerge, we need to get more independent eyes on the evidence from the start. During her trial, her defense lawyer Elaine Pourinski said that Farak wasnt taking drugs to party, but instead to control her depression. 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. February 2013 email, to which he attached the worksheets. The lead prosecutor on Farak's case knew about the diaries, as did supervisors at the state attorney general's office. This might not have mattered as much if the investigators had followed the evidence that Farak had been using drugs for at least a year and almost certainly longer. May 2003 started working in Hinton drug lab p. 14. "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents," Ryan wrote to the attorney general's office. Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak. This was not true, as Nassif's department later conceded. She tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. Poetically, that landmark case originated from the Hinton lab, although Dookhan didn't conduct the analysis in question. On paper, these numbers made Dookhan the most productive chemist at Hinton; the next most productive averaged around 300 samples per month. A Powerful EHR to Manage a Thriving Practice. A scandal erupts, raising questions for the thousands of defendants in her cases. His is one of what lawyers say could be thousands of convictions questioned in the wake of the Farak scandal. According to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Farak graduated with awards and distinctions. Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education. As extensively detailed in How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Farak was arrested on January 19, 2013. 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. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. In November 2013, Dookhan pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, and perjury. 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. The justices ordered Healey's department to cover all costs of notifying all defendants whose cases were dismissed. 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. 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. But absent evidence of aggravating misconduct by prosecutors or cops, the majority ruled, Dookhan's tampering alone didn't justify a blanket dismissal of every case she had touched. 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. State officials rushed to condemn her loudly and publicly. 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. ", Prosecutors nationwide pretty uniformly backed this argument, which the Supreme Court rejected in a 54 opinion. Farak signed a certification of drug samples in Penate's case on Dec. 22, 2011. While Dookhan had tampered with evidence and indulged in dry-labbing, Farak stole from her workplace. The state's top court took an even harsher view, ruling in October 2018 that the attorney general's office as an institution was responsible for the prosecutorial misconduct of its former employees. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the Amherst lab in 2004. 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. Her notes record on-the-job drug use ranging from small nips of the lab's baseline. 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. a certification of drug samples in Penates case on Dec. 22, 2011. Support GBH. They never searched Farak's computer or her home. Farak started at Amherst lab in Aug 2004 p. 32. Per her own court testimony, as shown in the docu-series, Farak started working at a state drug lab in Amherst in 2004. She later called this dismissive exchange a "plea to God.". Farak is amongst one of the 18 defendants battling the lawsuit filed by Rolando Penate. 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.". After serving for 13 months, she was released on parole in 2015. Ryan then filed a The scandal led. "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. Meier put the number at 40,323 defendants, though some have called that an overestimate. His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. Many more are likely to follow, with the total expected to exceed 50,000. In January 2014, she pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and drug possession. 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. 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.". Velis said he stood by the findings. She soon crossed all these lines. 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. Join us. It was. 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. concluded she was usually high while working in the lab for more than eight years before her arrest in January 2013 and started stealing samples seven years ago. Since the takeover, the budget for all forensic labs across the state has been increased, by around twenty-five per cent. 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? Both have since left the attorney general's office for other government positions. The criminal prosecution wasn't the only investigation of the Dookhan scandal. Her job consisted of testing drugs that have. The governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. . Cleverly omitting pronouns, she wrote that "after reviewing" the file, "every documenthas been disclosed." The charges against Penate were dismissed after Farak's conviction. Coakley assigned the case against Dookhan to Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek and her supervisor, John Verner. One thing that How to Fix a Drug Scandal makes clear is that it wasnt all Sonja Faraks fault. Farak wasn't the first Massachusetts chemist to tamper with drug evidence. "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." She had unrestricted access to the evidence room. After high school, Sonja went on to major in biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. 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 . 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. It's not as bad as Dookhan, they asserted and implied over and over. He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." During the next four years, she would periodically sober up and then relapse. Shown results suggesting otherwise, she copped to contaminating samples "a few times" during the previous "two to three years.". 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. Get all the latest from Sanditon on GBH Passport, How one Brookline studio helps artists with disabilities thrive. The civil lawsuit was one of the last tied to prosecutors' disputedhandling of the case against disgraced ex-chemist Sonja Farak, who was convicted in 2014 of ingesting drug samples she was supposed to test at the Amherst state drug lab. In 2017, a different judge ruled that Foster's actions constituted a "fraud upon the court," calling the letter "deliberately misleading." The drug lab technician was sent to prison for 18 months, but was released in 2015. The fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. A local prosecutor also asked Ballou to look into a case Farak had tested as far back as 2005. Talking Politics: Should a new government agency protect the coastline from climate change? (Netflix) A former state chemist, Sonja Farak, made headlines in 2013 when she was arrested for stealing and using drugs from a laboratory. 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. In June 2011, Dookhan secretly took 90 samples out of an evidence locker and then forged a co-worker's initials to check them back in, a clear chain-of-custody breach. In worksheet notes dated Thursday, Dec. 22, Farak wrote she "tried to resist using @ work, but ended up failing." Although the year she wrote the notes wasn't listed . As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. One of the reasons for the decrepit state and standard of the Amherst lab was the lack of funds. In the series, it's explained that Farak loved the energy the meth gave her. With the Dookhan case so fresh, reporters immediately labeled Farak "the second chemist. In a separate opinion in October 2018, the Supreme Judicial Court also ordered the state to return most court fines and probation fees to people whose cases were dismissed; one estimate puts that price tag at $10 million. . 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. And both pose the obvious question about how chemists could behave so badly for years without detection. At least 11,000 cases have already been dismissed due to fallout from the scandal, with thousands more likely to come. 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. 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 stopped the interview when asked about crack pipes found at her bench, and state police towed her car back to barracks while they waited on a warrant. They wrote that Lee, disabled by a stew of mental ailments, [spent] her hours surfing the Web in a haze.. As How to Fix a Drug Scandal explores, Farak had long struggled with her mental . The actions of Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan caused a racket of such a scale that the state had to recompense for it with millions of dollars and had to make a historic move in the dismissal of wrongful convictions. "If she were suffering from back injurymaybe she took some oxys?" Scalia may as well have been describing Dookhan. She couldn't be sure which cases these were, Dookhan told investigators. In the aftermath, the court felt it necessary to make clear that "no prosecutorhas the authority to decline to disclose exculpatory information.". After graduating from Portsmouth High School, Farak attended the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she got a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry in 2000. Damning evidence reveals drug lab chemist Sonja Farak's addictions. GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting. 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. Penate argued the court should follow those findings. 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. Release year: 2020. 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. "I was totally controlled by my addiction," Farak later testified. Follow us so you don't miss a thing! 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. ", Officials rushed to downplay the situation in Amherst. Magistrate Judge Robertson denied a request in Penate's lawsuit that Kaczmarek be prohibited from contesting the special hearing officer's findings. Below is an outline of her charges. They tend to be more freeform notes about the session and your impressions of the client's statements and demeanour. "Thousands of defendants were kept in the dark for far too long about the government misconduct in their cases," the ACLU and the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the state's public defense agency, wrote in a motion. To multiple courts' amazement, her incessant drug use never caught the attention of her co-workers. State prosecutors hadnt provided this evidence to other district attorneys offices contending with the Farak fallout, either. "A forensic analyst responding to a request from a law enforcement official may feel pressureor have an incentiveto alter the evidence in a manner favorable to the prosecution.". As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. 2. 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. A few months before her arrest, Farak's counselor recommended in-patient rehab. 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. As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . noted the mental health worksheets found in Faraks car, which had not been released. Farak admitted in testimony that she began using drugs almost as soon as she started working at the Massachusetts State Crime Lab in Amherst. Why Won't Maryland Sell Me a Goddamn Beer? Farak worked for the Amherst Drug Lab in Massachusetts for 9 years when she was convicted of stealing and using them. "As the gatekeeper to this evidence, she failed to turn over documents, and she adamantly opposed the requests for access. Four months after Ryan found the worksheets, Judge Kinder email highlighted in the Velis-Merrigan report. Investigators either missed or declined opportunities to dig very deep. 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. In worksheet notes dated Thursday, Dec. 22, Farak Though. Asked for comment, Foster in January objected through an attorney that the judge never gave her an opportunity to defend herself and that his ruling left an "indelible stain on her reputation.". Since her release, she has kept a low profile and managed to stay out of the public . 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. 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. 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. Gov. Between the two women, 47,000 drug convictions and guilty pleas have been dismissed in the last two years, many for misdemeanor possession. 3.3.2023 5:30 PM, Joe Lancaster In a March 2013 compelled release of additional drug treatment records, which indicated Farak used a variety of drugs that she stole from the lab for years. "That was one of the lines I had thought I would never cross: I wouldn't tamper with evidence, I wouldn't smoke crack, and then I wouldn't touch other people's work," Farak said. Patrick said "the most important take-home" was that "no individual's due process rights were compromised.". The Farak documents indicate she used drugs on the very day she certified samples as heroin in Penates case. Prosecutors have an obligation to give the defense exculpatory evidence including anything that could weaken evidence against defendants. Foster Since then, she has kept a low profile. 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. 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.

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