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.". Since the takeover, the budget for all forensic labs across the state has been increased, by around twenty-five per cent. It's not as bad as Dookhan, they asserted and implied over and over. It took another three years for the truth to emerge. "No reasonablejury could conclude that this evidence is not favorable.". Like Hinton, the Amherst lab had no cameras. Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. If they'd kept digging, defendants might still have learned the crucial facts. If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. At this point, Farakunlike Dookhandidn't admit anything. The Farak documents indicate she used drugs on the very day she certified samples as heroin in Penates case. In the aftermath of Farak's arrest, it's been argued that because she was under the influence, all of the cases she tested could be considered to have been wrongfully convicted. Commonwealth v. Cotto | ACLU Massachusetts 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. Given the account that Farak was a law-abiding citizen, it is questioned as to how an 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. "I was totally controlled by my addiction," Farak later testified. Where Is Sonja Farak Now? "These drugswere tested fairly," Coakley claimed the day after Farak's arrest. On the surface, their crimes dont seem as injurious and they dont seem to enjoy inflicting pain on others. One colleague called her the "super woman of the lab. Shown results suggesting otherwise, she copped to contaminating samples "a few times" during the previous "two to three years.". "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. We couldn't do it without you. Shawn Musgrave Sonja Farak had admitted to stealing and using drugs from the drug lab where she worked as a chemist for around 9 years. shipped nearly 300 pages of previously undisclosed materials to local prosecutors around the state. ", Officials rushed to downplay the situation in Amherst. "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. 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. She was trying to suppress mental health issues, depression in specific, and she attempted to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. After Faraks arrest in 2013, police found pages of mental health worksheets in her car indicating she'd struggled with drug addiction since at least 2011. Investigators gave that information to Kaczmarek and the state AG's office,according tohearings before thestate board that disciplines attorneys. Kaczmarek got a note from Sgt. 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." 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. Farak started at Amherst lab in Aug 2004 p. 32. And then the bigger investigation was going to be someone else.". She was ar-rested for tampering with evidence while abusing narcotics at work. memo to Judge Kinder the next week, Foster said she reviewed the file, and said every document in it had already been disclosed. State chemist may have affected more drug cases than previously known How to Fix a Drug Scandal: With Shannon O'Neill, Karl Kenzler, Paul Solotaroff, Scott Allen. A local prosecutor also asked Ballou to look into a case Farak had tested as far back as 2005. 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. Coakley's office finally launched a criminal investigation in July 2012, more than a year after the infraction was discovered by Dookhan's supervisors. She even made her own crack in the lab. NORTHAMPTON Sonja J. Farak told a nurse at the Western Massachusetts "It was almost like Dookhan wanted to get caught," one of her former co-workers told state police in 2012. He didn't buy her quibbling that there's a difference between an explicit lie and obfuscation by grammar. 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. The governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. 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 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." "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. Episode 1. One thing that How to Fix a Drug Scandal makes clear is that it wasnt all Sonja Faraks fault. A Compelling New Take on a Massachusetts Lab Scandal Tainting Thousands The twin Massachusetts drug lab scandals are unprecedented in the sheer number of cases thrown out because of forensic misconduct. Obviously, after a blunder of such scale, no one would want their samples checked from the same lab. Exhausted from the ongoing scandal in Boston, state officials were desperate for damage control. PDF United States Court of Appeals "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. The newest true crime series from Netflix, How to Fix a Drug Scandal, was released on April 1, 2020. B. ut when Penates lawyer tried to obtain the documents not certain what was in them before his clients 2013 trial, he was rebuffed by state prosecutors who said the papers were irrelevant according to emails included in investigative reports unsealed earlier this month. The judge ordered prosecutors and defense attorneys to coordinate on identifying undisclosed emails related to documents seized from the disgraced state crime lab chemist. If Farak found a substance was a true drug, the person it was confiscated from could be convicted of a substance-related crime. But unlike with Dookhan, there were no independent investigations of Farak or the Amherst lab. 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. He was floored when he found the worksheets. His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. 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.". Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. PDF Applying Routine Activity Theory: A Case Study of the Sonya Farak Drug Its no big deal, 14-year-old Farak said to the Panama City News Herald. According to a newspaper article from 1992, she was the first female in Rhode Island to be on a high school football team. As Kaczmarek herself later observed, Farak essentially had "a drugstore at her disposal" from her first day at the Amherst lab. Among the papers they seized were handwritten worksheets Farak completed for drug-abuse therapy. Who is Sonja Farak, the former state drug lab chemist featured in the show? Sonja Farak was a chemist for a state crime lab in Massachusetts. Between 2005 and 2013, Sonja Farak was performing laboratory tests at a state drug lab in Amherst while under the influence of narcotics. 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. denied Penates motion to dismiss the case, saying there was no evidence that Faraks misconduct extended to his case. And so, when she pleaded guilty in January 2014, Farak got what one attorney called "de facto immunity." 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. GBH News brings you the stories, local voices, and big ideas that shape our world. "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.". The defense bar had raised concerns that prosecutors might be "perceived as having a stake" in such an investigation. Sgt. A hearing on their motions is scheduled next month. She is not active on any social media platform and has kept her distance from the press. 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 Sonja Farak drug lab scandal, Mass - The Washington Post Kaczmarek had obtained the evidence at issue while she was prosecuting Farak on state charges of tampering with evidence and drug possession. 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. May 2003 started working in Hinton drug lab p. 14. 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. YouTube Who Are Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan? How to Fix a Drug Scandal True Story How to Fix a Drug Scandal: behind a staggering Netflix crime docuseries How to Fix a Drug Scandal - Wikipedia How to Fix a Drug Scandal is an American true crime documentary miniseries that was released on Netflix on April 1, 2020. 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. Democratic Gov. 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. Farak worked under the influence of drugs for nine years - from 2004 to 2013 - before she was caught. Deval Patrick's office didn't learn about the protocol breach until December 2011. Most important, they found seven worksheets from Farak's substance abuse therapy. At the time of her arrest, she had resided in 37 Laurel Park in Northampton. The Chemists and the Cover-Up - Reason.com 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. "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. Inwardly though, Sonja Farak was striving. Join us. Two detectives found Farak at a courthouse waiting to testify on an unrelated matter. What Netflix's How To Fix a Drug Scandal didn't tell you - Esquire This is merely a fishing expedition, Foster wrote in 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. 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. Four months after Ryan found the worksheets, Judge Kinder What Did Sonja Farak Do, Exactly? For people with disabilities needing assistance with the Public Files, contact Glenn Heath at 617-300-3268. It was an astoundingly light touch for the second state chemist arrested in six months. Penate was convicted in December 2013 and sentenced to serve five to seven years. The justices ordered Healey's department to cover all costs of notifying all defendants whose cases were dismissed. Her notes record on-the-job drug use ranging from small nips of the lab's baseline. Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. Magistrate Judge Robertson denied a request in Penate's lawsuit that Kaczmarek be prohibited from contesting the special hearing officer's findings. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the lab. Emma Camp Privacy Policy | Faraks wife had her own mental health problems, and according to Rolling Stone, Farak would have conflict with her wife every night at home. A scandal erupts, raising questions for the thousands of defendants in her cases. 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. 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. "he didn't request a warrant. 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. From the April 2023 issue, Billy Binion The Amherst lab had called state police when the two missing samples were noticed in 2013. There is no allegation of misconduct against the local prosecutors who presented the case against Penate in Hampden County Superior Court. Sonja Farak Cracked Out - Rough Diplomacy They wrote that Lee, disabled by a stew of mental ailments, [spent] her hours surfing the Web in a haze.. Former State Chemist High At Work For Nearly 8 Years, Documents Say Judge Kinder denied Ryans motion. Massachusetts DA seeks to vacate thousands of drug convictions - CNN Sonja Farak | MA Drug Lab Scandals - GitHub Pages The number is 888-999-2881. The former judges and the state police officers who helped them conducted a thorough review, said Emalie Gainey, spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey. Farak was arrested the next day, and the attorney general's office assigned the case to Anne Kaczmarek. 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." 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. Officials recognized the worksheets for what they were: near-indisputable confessions. State prosecutors hadnt provided this evidence to other district attorneys offices contending with the Farak fallout, either. 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.". Shortly into her role at Amherst, Farak decided to try liquid methamphetamine to ease her personal struggles. He also Sonja Farak: 35,000 criminal cases were dismissed because this - MEAWW It's been like this forever, or at least since girlhood. 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.