When the Farak scandal erupted, that misconduct came into view. | A. 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. 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. Discipline recommended for former assistant attorneys - Masslive 3.3.2023 4:50 PM, 2022 Reason Foundation | Thank you! Massachusetts crime lab scandal worsens: Dookhan and Farak. His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. 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.". Where is Sonja Farak Now? - The Cinemaholic The new numbers appear in a report issued by a court-designated "Special Master." 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. After graduating from Portsmouth High School, Farak attended the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she got a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry in 2000. Over the next four years, Farak consumed nearly all of it. While Dookhan had tampered with evidence and indulged in dry-labbing, Farak stole from her workplace. Soon after Dookhan's arrest, Coakley's office asked the governor to order a broader independent probe of the Hinton lab. Kaczmarek argued the findings are subject to appeal. Deval Patrick's office didn't learn about the protocol breach until December 2011. sonja farak - masslive.com "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. 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 . Stream GBH's Award-Winning Content For Parents And Children. As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . 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. Get all the latest from Sanditon on GBH Passport, How one Brookline studio helps artists with disabilities thrive. Though. The next month, Ryan asked again. Two detectives found Farak at a courthouse waiting to testify on an unrelated matter. Rollins said it covers "a period of time in which either now disgraced chemist Annie Dookhan, or another convicted chemist Sonja Farak ," worked there. Who is Sonja Farak, the former state drug lab chemist featured in the show? 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. It included information about the type of drugs she tampered with. She later called this dismissive exchange a "plea to God.". 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. To multiple courts' amazement, her incessant drug use never caught the attention of her co-workers. Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal Story: 5 Fast Facts. On the surface, their crimes dont seem as injurious and they dont seem to enjoy inflicting pain on others. 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. Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to stealing samples of drugs from an Amherst drug lab. Obviously, after a blunder of such scale, no one would want their samples checked from the same lab. 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. Where Is Sonja Farak From 'How To Fix A Drug Scandal' Now? - Women's Health The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the Amherst crime . If there's ever any uncertainty over "whether exculpatory information should be disclosed," the Supreme Judicial Court later wrote, "the prosecutor must file a motion for a protective order and must present the information for a judge to review.". 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. concluded there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or obstruction of justice in matters related to the Farak case. Verner, who testified that he didn't "micromanage" Kaczmarek, escaped criticism. It was. email highlighted in the Velis-Merrigan report. The Farak documents indicate she used drugs on the very day she certified samples as heroin in Penates case. 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. Foster's first stepper ethical obligations and office protocolshould have been to look through the evidence to see what had already been handed over. 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. In a 61 ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court in 2017, the defense bar, led by public defenders and the Massachusetts branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), won the dismissal of almost every conviction based on Dookhan's analysismore than 36,000 cases in all. Coakley's office finally launched a criminal investigation in July 2012, more than a year after the infraction was discovered by Dookhan's supervisors. One thing that How to Fix a Drug Scandal makes clear is that it wasnt all Sonja Faraks fault. Magistrate Judge Robertson denied a request in Penate's lawsuit that Kaczmarek be prohibited from contesting the special hearing officer's findings. Several defense attorneys who called for the Velis-Merrigan investigation say the former judges and their state police investigators got it wrong. As federal food benefits decline, Mass. The surveillance of the chemists as well as the standards and the confiscated drugs has also been increased considerably. As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. Her notes record on-the-job drug use ranging from small nips of the lab's baseline. 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. Who Is Luke Ryan From Netflix's 'How To Fix A Drug Scandal'? | True But she proceeded on the hunch that Farak only became addicted in the months before her arrest, and her colleagues stonewalled people who were skeptical of that timeline. "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. Between the two women, 47,000 drug convictions and guilty pleas have been dismissed in the last two years, many for misdemeanor possession. 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. 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. 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. Follow us so you don't miss a thing! Farak admitted to being on a list of drugs while working between 2004 and her 2013 arrest. Two Massachusetts drug lab technicians Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan were caught tainting evidence in separate drug labs in different but equally shocking ways. Sonja Farak, la qumica que tomaba drogas que registraba - Ahoramismo.com Farak was arrested the next day, and the attorney general's office assigned the case to Anne Kaczmarek. Coakley assigned the case against Dookhan to Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek and her supervisor, John Verner. As . (Belchertown, MA, 01/22/13) Sonja Farak, 35, of Northampton, is arraigned in Eastern Hampshire District Court in Belchertown on charges that she stole cocaine and heroin while working as a. Many more are likely to follow, with the total expected to exceed 50,000. Even though Farak found a job after graduation and was settled down with her partner, she continued to struggle with depression and felt like a stranger in her body. Because she did so, Plaintiff served more than five years in a state prison.". In her June 17 ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Katherine Robertson dismissed former Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek's claims of qualified immunity a doctrine that gives legal immunity to some public officials accused of misconduct. "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.". Joseph Ballou, lead investigator for the state police, called them the most important documents from the car. Farak as a young. "These drugswere tested fairly," Coakley claimed the day after Farak's arrest. She was struggling to suppress mental health issues, depression in particular, and she tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. "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.". Farak struggled with mental health throughout her life, the documentary series explains. 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. Farak. As he leafed through three boxes of evidence, he found the substance abuse worksheets and diaries. Instead, Kaczmarek proceeded as if the substance abuse was a recent development. 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. Carr weaves Farak's story into that of another Massachusetts chemist, Annie Dookhan, who worked across the state at the Hinton drug lab in Boston. It was an astoundingly light touch for the second state chemist arrested in six months. 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. The show also delves into the issues of the state in discovering and reporting on the extent of the cases that were affected by Faraks actions. 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. With the Dookhan case so fresh, reporters immediately labeled Farak "the second chemist. "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. Without access to the diaries, the Springfield judge in 2013 found that Farak had starting stealing from samples in summer 2012. | . "he didn't request a warrant. A final decision is still pending and must be approved by the state Supreme Judicial Court. State police took these worksheets from Farak's car in January 2013, the same day they arrested her for tampering with evidence and for cocaine possession. Sonja Farak exposed - full extent of her drug use and where she is now ", In 2004, her first full year at the lab, Dookhan reported analyzing approximately 700 samples per month. Meanwhile, other top prosecutors, including Coakley, largely escaped criticism for their collective failure to hand over evidence that they were bound by constitutional mandate to share with defendants. Her notes record on-the-job drug use ranging from small nips of the lab's baseline standard stock of the stimulant phentermine to stealing crack not only from her own samples but from colleagues' as well. 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. 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. The Dookhan prosecution was barely underway, a grand jury having returned indictments a few weeks earlier. Dookhan was now spending less time at her lab bench and more time testifying in court about her results. And when the tests she did run came back negative, Dookhan added controlled substances to the vials. In December 2011, after police in Springfield, Mass., had arrested Renaldo Penate for allegedly selling heroin, the drugs from that case were tested at a state drug lab by technician Sonja Farak. | food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. She was also under the influence when she took the stand during her trial. The information showed that Farak sought therapy for drug addiction and that her misconduct had been ongoing for years. At the very least, we expected that we would get everything they collected in their case against Farak. Flannery, now in private practice, said the substance abuse worksheets are clearly relevant to defendants challenging Faraks analysis. How to write better therapy progress notes: 10 examples Kaczmarek was now juggling two scandals on opposite sides of the state. She was released in 2015, as reported by Mass Live. Foster consulted Kaczmarek about the files contents, according to an 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." "It was almost like Dookhan wanted to get caught," one of her former co-workers told state police in 2012. In court, she added that there was "no smoking gun" in the evidence. 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. 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. In 2017, a different judge ruled that Foster's actions constituted a "fraud upon the court," calling the letter "deliberately misleading." This very well could have been the end of the investigative trail but for a few stubborn defense lawyers, who appealed the ruling. Applying Routine Activity Theory: A Case Study of the Sonya Farak Drug From 2004 to 2013, Farak took advantage of . Deborah Becker Twitter Host/ReporterDeborah Becker is a senior correspondent and host at WBUR. "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. Read More: Where is Sonja Farak Sister Now? 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. If Farak found a substance was a true drug, the person it was confiscated from could be convicted of a substance-related crime. On paper, these numbers made Dookhan the most productive chemist at Hinton; the next most productive averaged around 300 samples per month. The Attorney Generals Office, Velis and Merrigan and the state police declined to answer questions about the handling of the Farak evidence. El 6 de enero de 2014, Farak se declar culpable de los cargos en su contra. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. Farak worked for the Amherst Drug Lab in Massachusetts for 9 years when she was convicted of stealing and using them. 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. 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.". We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. 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. 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. Netflix released a new docu-series called "How to Fix a Drug Scandal." ", Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. That motion was denied, and the notice letters will explain Farak's tampering without any mention of prosecutorial misconduct. 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. ", But another co-worker was suspicious, particularly since he "never saw Dookhan in front of a microscope.". She was arrested in 2013 when the supervisor at the Amherst lab was made aware that two samples were missing. Where Are How to Fix a Drug Scandal's Sonja Farak and Kris - Decider In Sonja Farak drug lab scandal, Mass - The Washington Post The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. Yet Dookhan's brazen crimes went undetected for ages. Months after Farak pleaded guilty in January 2014, Ryan filed a Nassif put Dookhan on desk duty but allowed her to finish testing cases already on her plate, including some of the samples she had taken from the locker. She received the American Institute of Chemists Award in her final year as well as a Crimson and Gray Award from the school a year before, which recognized her dedication, commitment and unselfishness in the enrichment of student life at WPI. A Rolling Stone piece on Farak also indicated that she graduated with high distinction from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. In a March 2013 Out of "an abundance of caution," Kaczmarek didn't present them to the grand jury that was convened to determine whether to indict Farak. She couldn't be sure which cases these were, Dookhan told investigators. "No reasonablejury could conclude that this evidence is not favorable.". But whether anyone investigated her conduct during a brief stint working at the state's Boston drug lab is at . After serving for 13 months, she was released on parole in 2015. Inwardly though, Sonja Farak was striving. 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. The defense bar had raised concerns that prosecutors might be "perceived as having a stake" in such an investigation. She said, It was about coping; it certainly wasnt about having fun; I dont think shes had fun in quite a while.. Foster A status hearing on Penate's suit, which was filed in 2017, is scheduled for July. You can try, Suspensions and a reprimand proposed for prosecutors admonished in drug lab scandal. Farak worked under the influence of drugs for nine years - from 2004 to 2013 - before she was caught. Farak signed The last contact information provided by her, in response to Penates allegations, placed her residence in Hatfield, Massachusetts. Given the account that Farak was a law-abiding citizen, it is questioned as to how an She recovered, made it through college and got a job as a chemist at the Amherst Crime Lab, where she tested confiscated drugs. 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. Patrick said "the most important take-home" was that "no individual's due process rights were compromised.". As How to Fix a Drug Scandal explores, Farak had long struggled with her mental . But unlike with Dookhan, no one launched a bigger investigation of Farak. Without even interviewing Foster, they determined there was "no evidence" of obstruction of justice by her, by Kaczmarek, or by any state prosecutor. 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. In November 2013, Dookhan pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, and perjury. Having barely investigated her, prosecutors indicted Farak only for the samples in her possession the day she was caught. Foster and another assistant attorney general assented to that motion. Netflix's How to Fix a Drug Scandal: What Happened To Sonja Farak 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 . GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting. Lets find out. State officials rushed to condemn her loudly and publicly. Patrick appointed the state inspector general to look into it. Sonja Farak | MA Drug Lab Scandals - GitHub Pages Instead, she submitted an intentionally vague letter to the judge claiming defense attorneys already had everything. One of the reasons for the decrepit state and standard of the Amherst lab was the lack of funds. Perhaps, as criminal justice scandals inevitably emerge, we need to get more independent eyes on the evidence from the start. A hearing on their motions is scheduled next month. The report 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. Kaczmarek quoted the worksheets in a memo to her supervisor, Verner, and others, summarizing that they revealed Farak's "struggle with substance abuse." What Did Sonja Farak Do, Exactly? High Massachusetts Lab Chemist Causes Thousands Of Drug Cases To Be Dismissed. She tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. Name. 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. It's been like this forever, or at least since girlhood. 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. Martha Coakley, then attorney general for the state, argued in Melendez-Diaz that a chemist's certificate contains only "neutral, objective facts." Regarding the cases that she had handled, the Massachusetts courts threw out every case in the Amherst lab during her tenure. A year later, in October 2014, prosecutors relented, granting access to the full evidence in Farak's case to attorney Luke Ryan. Did Falsified Drug Tests Lead to Wrongful Convictions? - Rolling Stone Farak started at Amherst lab in Aug 2004 p. 32. Its no big deal, 14-year-old Farak said to the Panama City News Herald. 3.4.2023 8:00 AM, Reason Staff What Happened To Sonja From Netflix Drug Scandal Series - Refinery29 Kaczmarek, along with former assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and John Verner, all face possible sanctions. I felt euphoric, Kogan wrote of Farak. Farak was getting high off the confiscated drugs police sent her way before replacing the evidence with fake drugs. Defense attorneys had. After high school, Sonja went on to major in biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts. Sonja Farak. Subscribe to Reason Roundup, a wrap up of the last 24 hours of news, delivered fresh each morning. If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. Investigators gave that information to Kaczmarek and the state AG's office,according tohearings before thestate board that disciplines attorneys. 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. 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. 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. The attorney general's representative at these hearings was Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster, a recent hire. Per her own court testimony, as shown in the docu-series, Farak started working at a state drug lab in Amherst in 2004. 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. 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. Our streamlined software is accessible wherever and whenever you . The medical records stated that she did not have an existing drug problem that was amplified by her access to more substances. Approximately one year later, she pled guilty to tampering with evidence, unlawful possession, and stealing narcotics. 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.
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