Due to the conviction, prosecutors were forced to dismiss more than . Terms Of Use, (Annie Dookhan (left) and Sonja Farak, Associated Press). The scandal led. compelled release of additional drug treatment records, which indicated Farak used a variety of drugs that she stole from the lab for years. Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education. From 2004 to 2013, Farak took advantage of . 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. Even the master's degree on her rsum was fabricated. 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. The Farak documents indicate she used drugs on the very day she certified samples as heroin in Penates case. But she insisted the drugs didn't compromise her worka belief that one judge would aptly declare "belies logic.". Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. Between the two women, 47,000 drug convictions and guilty pleas have been dismissed in the last two years, many for misdemeanor possession. And both pose the obvious question about how chemists could behave so badly for years without detection. denied Penates motion to dismiss the case, saying there was no evidence that Faraks misconduct extended to his case. A. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. Farak apparently still tested each caseunlike Annie Dookhan, another Massachusetts chemist who was arrested five months prior to Farak for fabricating test results. 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. "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. Her medical records included notes from Faraks therapist in Amherst, Anna Kogan. Farak admitted to being on a list of drugs while working between 2004 and her 2013 arrest. They were all rendered unacceptable. But whether anyone investigated her conduct during a brief stint working at the state's Boston drug lab is at . Coakley did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. At least 11,000 cases have already been dismissed due to fallout from the scandal, with thousands more likely to come. "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." Dookhan had seeded public mistrust in the criminal justice system, which "now becomes an issue in every criminal trial for every defendant.". She started smoking crack cocaine in 2011 and was soon using it 10 to 12 times a day. And when defense attorneys tried to do it themselves, Coakley's office blocked their efforts. another filing. She was trying to suppress mental health issues, depression in specific, and she attempted to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. "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. She was struggling to suppress mental health issues, depression in particular, and she tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. She married Lee after starting her job, but their marriage was rocky. "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. 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. Despite clear indications that Farak used a variety of narcoticsher worksheets mentioned phentermine, and that vial of powdered oxycodone-acetaminophen had been found at her benchKaczmarek also proceeded as if crack cocaine were Farak's sole drug. 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.". One was clearly dated November 16, 2011a year and two months before her arrest. Martha Coakley, then attorney general for the state, argued in Melendez-Diaz that a chemist's certificate contains only "neutral, objective facts." 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 . Her wrongdoings were exposed when unsealed cocaine and a crack pipe were found under her desk. Instead, she submitted an intentionally vague letter to the judge claiming defense attorneys already had everything. "Whether law enforcement officials overlooked these papers or intentionally suppressed them is a question for another day.". Who is Sonja Farak, the former state drug lab chemist featured in the show? She was released in 2015, as reported by Mass Live. Ryan then filed a "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents," Ryan wrote to the attorney general's office. Rollins said it covers "a period of time in which either now disgraced chemist Annie Dookhan, or another convicted chemist Sonja Farak ," worked there. You can check your records electronically by following this link: https://icori.chs.state.ma.us. But she worried they might be privileged as health information. It's not as bad as Dookhan, they asserted and implied over and over. As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. 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. Fue arrestada el 19 de enero de 2013. answered that the state considered the evidence irrelevant to any case other than Faraks.. The special hearing officer found Kaczmarek "displayed no remorse" and was "not candid" during the disciplinary proceedings. Most important, they found seven worksheets from Farak's substance abuse therapy. 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. 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 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. "The gravity of the present case cannot be overstated," Kaczmarek wrote in her memo recommending a prison sentence of five to seven years. 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. 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. "No reasonablejury could conclude that this evidence is not favorable.". Foster and another assistant attorney general assented to that motion. The Netflix docuseries ends by acknowledging that Farak received an 18-month sentence, and that defense attorney Luke Ryan was able . Get all the latest from Sanditon on GBH Passport, How one Brookline studio helps artists with disabilities thrive. Penate alleged Kaczmarek's actions violated his "Brady rights," which require prosecutors to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to defense counsel. Kaczmarek was now juggling two scandals on opposite sides of the state. 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. Many more are likely to follow, with the total expected to exceed 50,000. Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. Deborah Becker Twitter Host/ReporterDeborah Becker is a senior correspondent and host at WBUR. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, Sonja Farak is the subject of Netflix's "How To Fix a Drug Scandal. February 2013 email, to which he attached the worksheets. Kaczmarek also oversaw the prosecution for the attorney general's office in that case. The judge ordered prosecutors and defense attorneys to coordinate on identifying undisclosed emails related to documents seized from the disgraced state crime lab chemist. Joseph Ballou, lead investigator for the state police, called them the most important documents from the car. One of the reasons for the decrepit state and standard of the Amherst lab was the lack of funds. Maybe it's not a matter of checklists or reminders that prosecutors have to keep their eyes open for improprieties. El 6 de enero de 2014, Farak se declar culpable de los cargos en su contra. 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." Because of all that, it's no surprise that Farak was sent to prison in Massachusetts. | 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. 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. Velis said he stood by the findings. | email highlighted in the Velis-Merrigan report. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. 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. That motion was denied, and the notice letters will explain Farak's tampering without any mention of prosecutorial misconduct. But a crucial issue was not before the court. Patrick said "the most important take-home" was that "no individual's due process rights were compromised.". 3.3.2023 4:50 PM, 2022 Reason Foundation | 3.3.2023 5:45 PM, Jacob Sullum Who is Sonja Farak? Ryan finally viewed the file in the attorney generals offices in October 2014. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. How to Fix a Drug Scandal is an American true crime documentary miniseries that was released on Netflix on April 1, 2020. Dookhan was now spending less time at her lab bench and more time testifying in court about her results. Each employee had a unique swipe card, but Farak simply used a physical key to get in after hours and on weekends. 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. Sonja Farak stole, ingested or manufactured drugs almost every day for eight years while working as a chemist at a state lab in Amherst, Massachusetts. Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to stealing samples of drugs from an Amherst drug lab. In a letter filed with the Supreme Court, Julianne Nassif, a lab supervisor, wrote that Hinton had "appropriate quality control" measures. With the lab's ample drug supply, she was able to sneak the drug each day from a jug that resided in the shared workspace. Meier put the number at 40,323 defendants, though some have called that an overestimate. This not only led to people getting a reprieve from prison but also filing their own lawsuits against the injustice they had to suffer. This very well could have been the end of the investigative trail but for a few stubborn defense lawyers, who appealed the ruling. Her answer: more than eight years before her arrest. ordered a report on the history of her illicit behavior. 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. The report ", Prosecutors nationwide pretty uniformly backed this argument, which the Supreme Court rejected in a 54 opinion. Both have since left the attorney general's office for other government positions. 1. 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 . You can try, Suspensions and a reprimand proposed for prosecutors admonished in drug lab scandal. She soon crossed all these lines. Episode 1. 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. "Annie Dookhan's alleged actions corrupted the integrity of the criminal justice system, and there are many victims as a result of this," Coakley said at a press conference. Finding that there did not appear to be enough slides in Dookhan's discard pile to match her numbers, the colleague brought his concerns to an outside attorney, who advised he should be careful making "accusations about a young woman's career," he later told state police. The lone dissenting justice called the decision "too little and too late" and argued that the severity of the scandal required tossing all the cases. 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 . I felt euphoric, Kogan wrote of Farak. The newest true crime series from Netflix, How to Fix a Drug Scandal, was released on April 1, 2020. She received an email from a detective weeks after Farak's arrest containing detailed notes Farak made in conjunction with her own drug treatment, pointedly identified as "FARAK Admissions" but failed to disclose them for years. The staff in the new lab was also doubled, and the number of trainees was also increased. 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. She played as the starting guard for Portsmouth High Schools freshman team. In a March 2013 She was also testifying in court while high. Release year: 2020. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); NEXT: Zoning Makes the Green New Deal Impossible. 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. Judge Kinder denied Ryans motion. It's been like this forever, or at least since girlhood. The lawsuit names Kaczmarek, Farak and three members of the state police. Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting. 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. 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. While Dookhan had tampered with evidence and indulged in dry-labbing, Farak stole from her workplace. Sgt. They wrote that Lee, disabled by a stew of mental ailments, [spent] her hours surfing the Web in a haze.. Farak was getting high off the confiscated drugs police sent her way before replacing the evidence with fake drugs. 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. She was sentenced in 2014 to 18 months in prison and 5 years of probation. He recommended she lose her law license for two years; the Office of Bar Counsel later argued Kaczmarek should be disbarred. And yet, despite explicit requests for this kind of evidence, state prosecutors withheld Farak's handwritten notes about her drug use, theft, and evidence tampering from defense attorneys and a judge for more than a year. 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. 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. Privacy Policy | Damning evidence reveals drug lab chemist Sonja Farak's addictions. The Attorney Generals Office, Velis and Merrigan and the state police declined to answer questions about the handling of the Farak evidence. Sonja Farak. Sonja Farak had admitted to stealing and using drugs from the drug lab where she worked as a chemist for around 9 years. Since then, she has kept a low profile. They were found with their packaging sliced open and their contents apparently altered. In worksheet notes dated Thursday, Dec. 22, Farak ", The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. TherapyNotes. Obviously, after a blunder of such scale, no one would want their samples checked from the same lab. 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. Earlier that day, a chemist at the Amherst drug lab had tracked two samples that were missing from the evidence locker to Sonja Farak's bench. 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. 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? Among other items, Kaczmarek Her ar-rest led to the dismissal of thousands of drug cases in Massachusetts. 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. As How to Fix a Drug Scandal explores, Farak had long struggled with her mental . This is merely a fishing expedition, Foster wrote in When the Farak scandal erupted, that misconduct came into view. 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. Perhaps, as criminal justice scandals inevitably emerge, we need to get more independent eyes on the evidence from the start. 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. Defense attorneys had. TherapyNotes is a complete practice management system with everything you need to manage patient records, schedule appointments, meet with patients remotely, create rich documentation, and bill insurance, right at your fingertips. She grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. In January 2014, she pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and drug possession. 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. Sonja Farak was a chemist for a state crime lab in Massachusetts. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility at GBH, Transparency in Coverage Cost-Sharing Disclosures. On paper, these numbers made Dookhan the most productive chemist at Hinton; the next most productive averaged around 300 samples per month. Both scandals undercut confidence in the criminal justice system and the validity of forensic analysis. Kaczmarek, along with former assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and John Verner, all face possible sanctions. 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. She tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. State officials rushed to condemn her loudly and publicly. More than 24,000 convictions in 16,449 cases tainted by former state chemist Sonja Farak have been dismissed in a court case brought by the ACLU of Massachusetts, the Committee of Public Counsel Services (CPCS), and law firm Fick & Marx LLP. Listen Live: Classic and Contemporary Celtic, Listen Live: Cape, Coast and Islands NPR Station, Boston nonprofit Street2Ivy is producing this generation's entrepreneurs. Gov. State prosecutors hadnt provided this evidence to other district attorneys offices contending with the Farak fallout, either. 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.". 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. 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. ", Officials rushed to downplay the situation in Amherst. To better estimate how many convictions will have to be reviewed because of Farak, the Supreme Judicial Court
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