"Whether law enforcement officials overlooked these papers or intentionally suppressed them is a question for another day.". 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? The governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. Farak struggled with mental health throughout her life, the documentary series explains. The attorney general's representative at these hearings was Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster, a recent hire. "I was totally controlled by my addiction," Farak later testified. Penate's lawsuit, which seeks $5.7 million in damages, is believed to be one of the last remaining suits tied to the scandals; the statute of limitations to file such suits has expired. Due to the conviction, prosecutors were forced to dismiss more than . Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility at GBH, Transparency in Coverage Cost-Sharing Disclosures. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. But unlike with Dookhan, there were no independent investigations of Farak or the Amherst lab. The Amherst lab had called state police when the two missing samples were noticed in 2013. another filing. 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. GBH News brings you the stories, local voices, and big ideas that shape our world. Farak worked for the Amherst Drug Lab in Massachusetts for 9 years when she was convicted of stealing and using them. Biden Embraces the Fearmongering, Vows To Squash D.C.'s Mild Criminal Justice Reforms, The Flap Over Biden's Comment About 2 Fentanyl Deaths Obscures Prohibition's Role in Causing Them, Conservatives Turn Further Against WarExcept Maybe With Mexico. Foster Two Massachusetts drug lab technicians Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan were caught tainting evidence in separate drug labs in different but equally shocking ways. . If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. 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. Foster and another assistant attorney general assented to that motion. For people with disabilities needing assistance with the Public Files, contact Glenn Heath at 617-300-3268. The lawsuit names Kaczmarek, Farak and three members of the state police. Kaczmarek quoted the worksheets in a memo to her supervisor, Verner, and others, summarizing that they revealed Farak's "struggle with substance abuse." 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. 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. Her job consisted of testing drugs that have. The surveillance of the chemists as well as the standards and the confiscated drugs has also been increased considerably. The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the Amherst crime . Faraks notes also After her arrest, she received support from her parents, who showed up to her court appearances, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported. They wrote that Lee, disabled by a stew of mental ailments, [spent] her hours surfing the Web in a haze.. Defense attorneys had. Support GBH. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. At least 11,000 cases have already been dismissed due to fallout from the scandal, with thousands more likely to come. Lets find out. . "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. Among other items, Kaczmarek Yet Dookhan's brazen crimes went undetected for ages. chemist, Sonja Farak, had been battling drug addiction and had tampered with samples she was assigned to test around the time she tested the samples in Penate's case. 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. Having barely investigated her, prosecutors indicted Farak only for the samples in her possession the day she was caught. ", Officials rushed to downplay the situation in Amherst. 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. Disgraced drug lab chemist Sonja Farak emerges as her own attorney as defendant in $5.7 million federal lawsuit. To better estimate how many convictions will have to be reviewed because of Farak, the Supreme Judicial Court After she was caught, Farak pleaded guilty to stealing drugs from the lab and was sentenced to prison time of 18 months. Coakley's office finally launched a criminal investigation in July 2012, more than a year after the infraction was discovered by Dookhan's supervisors. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); NEXT: Zoning Makes the Green New Deal Impossible. "It was almost like Dookhan wanted to get caught," one of her former co-workers told state police in 2012. motion with Hampden Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Kinder to see the evidence for himself. Out of "an abundance of caution," Kaczmarek didn't present them to the grand jury that was convened to determine whether to indict Farak. In 2009, Farak branched out to the lab's amphetamine, phentermine, and cocaine standards. Judge Kinder ordered her to produce all potentially privileged documents for his review to determine whether they could be disclosed. She even made her own crack in the lab. Gioia called for evidentiary hearings so prosecutors can be asked about what they knew, when they knew it, and what they did with their knowledge., Luke Ryan, Penates trial lawyer, said that the state police officers working on the report failed to obtain an appropriate understanding of the events that transpired before they were assigned to this investigation.". | And when the tests she did run came back negative, Dookhan added controlled substances to the vials. 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.". She was released in 2015, as reported by Mass Live. She started smoking crack cocaine in 2011 and was soon using it 10 to 12 times a day. ", But another co-worker was suspicious, particularly since he "never saw Dookhan in front of a microscope.". A local prosecutor also asked Ballou to look into a case Farak had tested as far back as 2005. Damning evidence reveals drug lab chemist Sonja Farak's addictions. Still, the state was acquiring evidence. 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. Rollins said it covers "a period of time in which either now disgraced chemist Annie Dookhan, or another convicted chemist Sonja Farak ," worked there. 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. It was. 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. Chemist Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to "tampering with evidence" back in 2014 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. 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 . 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. Foster replied that because the investigation against Farak was ongoing, she couldnt let him see it. 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. 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. Farak started at Amherst lab in Aug 2004 p. 32. Its unclear if Farak is still with Lee, as they have both remained out of the public eye since the case. 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. 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.". Release year: 2020. With your support, GBH will continue to innovate, inspire and connect through reporting you value that meets todays moments. 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. You can try, Suspensions and a reprimand proposed for prosecutors admonished in drug lab scandal. Even before her arrest, the Department of Public Health had launched an internal inquiry into how such misconduct had gone undetected for such a long time. Who is Sonja Farak, the former state drug lab chemist featured in the show? In the series, it's explained that Farak loved the energy the meth gave her. 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. 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. Her wrongdoings were exposed when unsealed cocaine and a crack pipe were found under her desk. Her ar-rest led to the dismissal of thousands of drug cases in Massachusetts. A drug chemist . 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. This scandal has thrown thousands of drug cases into question, on top of more than 24,000 cases tainted by a scandal involving ex-chemist Annie Dookhan at the state's Hinton Lab in Jamaica Plain. The civil lawsuit was one of the last tied to prosecutors' disputed handling of the case against disgraced ex-chemist Sonja Farak, who was convicted in 2014 of ingesting drug samples she was. The new numbers appear in a report issued by a court-designated "Special Master." 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. 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. 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. One colleague called her the "super woman of the lab. Magistrate Judge Robertson denied a request in Penate's lawsuit that Kaczmarek be prohibited from contesting the special hearing officer's findings. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2015by which time the current state attorney general, Maura Healey, had been electedthat it was "imperative" for the government to "thoroughly investigate the timing and scope of Farak's misconduct." Approximately one year later, she pled guilty to tampering with evidence, unlawful possession, and stealing narcotics. Terms Of Use, (Annie Dookhan (left) and Sonja Farak, Associated Press). 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. He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." Most of the heat for thisincluding formal bar complaintshas fallen on Kaczmarek and another former prosecutor, Kris Foster, who was tasked with responding to subpoenas regarding the Farak evidence. Hearings could help decide how many of thousands of convictions tainted by Farak's testing may be overturned. If they'd kept digging, defendants might still have learned the crucial facts. 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. From the March 2019 issue, "Tried to resist using @ work, but ended up failing," the forensic chemist scribbled on a diary worksheet she kept as part of her substance abuse therapy. A hearing on their motions is scheduled next month. Because she did so, Plaintiff served more than five years in a state prison.". She married Lee after starting her job, but their marriage was rocky. The disgraced chemist was sentenced to less than two years behind bars in 2014, following her guilty pleas for stealing cocaine from the lab. This is merely a fishing expedition, Foster wrote in And then the bigger investigation was going to be someone else.". Name. ", In 2004, her first full year at the lab, Dookhan reported analyzing approximately 700 samples per month. She started seeing a substance abuse therapist around this time. There is nothing to indicate that the allegations against Farak date back to the time she tested the drugs in Penates case. The former judges and the state police officers who helped them conducted a thorough review, said Emalie Gainey, spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey. In the aftermath, the court felt it necessary to make clear that "no prosecutorhas the authority to decline to disclose exculpatory information.". Sonja Farak is at the center of Netflix's new true crime docuseries, How To Fix a Drug Scandal. According to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Farak graduated with awards and distinctions. noted the mental health worksheets found in Faraks car, which had not been released. 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 . 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. At this point, Farakunlike Dookhandidn't admit anything. Penate argued the court should follow those findings. Maybe it's not a matter of checklists or reminders that prosecutors have to keep their eyes open for improprieties. One reason that didn't happen, he says: "the determination Coakley and her team made the morning after Farak's arrest that her misconduct did not affect the due process rights of any Farak defendants." (Featured Image Credit: Mass Live). But in a But a crucial issue was not before the court. The governor didn't appoint the inspector general or anyone else to determine how long Farak was altering samples or running analyses while high. In an August 2013 email, Ryan asked Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster to review evidence taken from Farak. "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.". Each employee had a unique swipe card, but Farak simply used a physical key to get in after hours and on weekends. As extensively detailed in How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Farak was arrested on January 19, 2013. This article originally appeared in print under the headline "The Chemists and the Cover-Up". 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. 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. Sonja Farak is in the grip of a rubbed-raw depression that hasn't responded to medication. According to the documents released Tuesday, investigators found that Sonja Farak tested drug samples and testified in court while under the influence of methamphetamines, ketamine, cocaine, LSD . February 2013 email, to which he attached the worksheets. YouTube Cleverly omitting pronouns, she wrote that "after reviewing" the file, "every documenthas been disclosed." Meier put the number at 40,323 defendants, though some have called that an overestimate. 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. Two weeks after Ryans discovery, the Attorney Generals Office Patrick appointed the state inspector general to look into it. 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 . | 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. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015. And when defense attorneys tried to do it themselves, Coakley's office blocked their efforts. Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. Even the master's degree on her rsum was fabricated. The staff in the new lab was also doubled, and the number of trainees was also increased. El 6 de enero de 2014, Farak se declar culpable de los cargos en su contra. In court, she added that there was "no smoking gun" in the evidence. The story of the intertwining Farak and Penate evidence began in January 2013, when state police arrested Farak and searched her car. ordered a report on the history of her illicit behavior. 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. It was an astoundingly light touch for the second state chemist arrested in six months. Penate alleged Kaczmarek's actions violated his "Brady rights," which require prosecutors to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to defense counsel. Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal Story: 5 Fast Facts. She had never quashed a subpoena before, but supervisors told her to fend off motions about Farak. Another three days later, state police conducted a full search of Farak's workstation, finding a vial of powder that tested positive for oxycodone, plus 11.7 grams of cocaine in a desk drawer. "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. 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. We couldn't do it without you. Deval Patrick's office didn't learn about the protocol breach until December 2011. He didn't buy her quibbling that there's a difference between an explicit lie and obfuscation by grammar. Foster consulted Kaczmarek about the files contents, according to an 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.". 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. You can check your records electronically by following this link: https://icori.chs.state.ma.us. 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. 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.". She had been accused of intentional infliction of emotional distress in addition to the conspiracy to violate [Penates] civil rights.. 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. 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. Kaczmarek got a note from Sgt. Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the lab. Inwardly though, Sonja was struggling. Democratic Gov. "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.". Sgt. They were found with their packaging sliced open and their contents apparently altered. They tend to be more freeform notes about the session and your impressions of the client's statements and demeanour. And both pose the obvious question about how chemists could behave so badly for years without detection. 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. Relying on an investigation conducted by state police, the judges "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. But she worried they might be privileged as health information. 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. She started working shortly after for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health in July 2003 until July 2012, and from July 2012 until January 2013 for the Massachusetts State Police when the lab fell under their jurisdiction. The next month, Ryan asked again. A Powerful EHR to Manage a Thriving Practice. A. Patrick said "the most important take-home" was that "no individual's due process rights were compromised.". She was arrested in 2013 when the supervisor at the Amherst lab was made aware that two samples were missing. ", Prosecutors nationwide pretty uniformly backed this argument, which the Supreme Court rejected in a 54 opinion. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. 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. But whether anyone investigated her conduct during a brief stint working at the state's Boston drug lab is at . But she insisted the drugs didn't compromise her worka belief that one judge would aptly declare "belies logic.". The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. denied Penates motion to dismiss the case, saying there was no evidence that Faraks misconduct extended to his case. Read More: Where is Sonja Farak Sister Now? 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. In her initial police interview, given at her dining room table, Dookhan said she "would never falsify" results "because it's someone's life on the line." 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. Verner, who testified that he didn't "micromanage" Kaczmarek, escaped criticism. Introduction. 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." Prosecutors have an obligation to give the defense exculpatory evidence including anything that could weaken evidence against defendants. 3.4.2023 8:00 AM, Reason Staff Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. Since her release, she has kept a low profile and managed to stay out of the public . Two detectives found Farak at a courthouse waiting to testify on an unrelated matter. motion on behalf of another client to see the evidence. In 2019, the chemist was spotted at federal court in Springfield, MA , attending a civil case.
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