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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. "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. Sonja Farak is in the grip of a rubbed-raw depression that hasn't responded to medication. concluded there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or obstruction of justice in matters related to the Farak case. Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. 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. As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . (Conveniently, they also found a Patriots schedule from 2011 in the car.). As he leafed through three boxes of evidence, he found the substance abuse worksheets and diaries. 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. Penate argued the court should follow those findings. In January 2014, she pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and drug possession. What Did Sonja Farak Do, Exactly? The governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. 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. Farak is amongst one of the 18 defendants battling the lawsuit filed by Rolando Penate. The staff in the new lab was also doubled, and the number of trainees was also increased. wrote to the Attorney Generals Office two days later. The attorney general's representative at these hearings was Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster, a recent hire. This article originally appeared in print under the headline "The Chemists and the Cover-Up". In worksheet notes dated Thursday, Dec. 22, Farak The charges against Penate were dismissed after Farak's conviction. 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. They say court records and newly released emails show prosecutors sat on evidence they were familiar with that pointed to Faraks drug use in 2011, when she worked on Penates case. wrote she "tried to resist using @ work, but ended up failing." Two Massachusetts drug-testing laboratory technicians are caught tampering with and falsifying drug evidence, and prosecutors are reluctant to disclose the full extent of their criminal behavior. Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. "Forensic evidence is not uniquely immune from the risk of manipulation," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority. Shortly into her role at Amherst, Farak decided to try liquid methamphetamine to ease her personal struggles. motion on behalf of another client to see the evidence. The scandal led. Its unclear if Farak is still with Lee, as they have both remained out of the public eye since the case. Farak received a sentence of 18 months in jail and 5 years of probation. Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. 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. 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 . One was clearly dated November 16, 2011a year and two months before her arrest. Her access to evidence was not restricted, and she continued testifying in court. After weeks of hearings, a "special hearing officer" selected by the board recommended potential sanctions against them all. The court decided to uphold a ruling dismissing charges against the defendant, a juvenile at the time of the alleged offense identified only as Washington W. The justices didnt name his prosecutor, David Omiunu, who was identified by The Eye from other court records. Months after Farak pleaded guilty in January 2014, Ryan filed a 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. Among the papers they seized were handwritten worksheets Farak completed for drug-abuse therapy. Two detectives found Farak at a courthouse waiting to testify on an unrelated matter. 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. Kaczmarek got a note from Sgt. Coakley did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. 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. a certification of drug samples in Penates case on Dec. 22, 2011. "All Defendant had to do to honor the Plaintiffs Brady rights was to turn over copies of documents that were obviously exculpatory as to the Farak defendants or accede to one of the repeated requests from counsel, including Plaintiffs counsel, that they be permitted to inspect the evidence seized from Faraks car," Robertson wrote in her ruling. The governor didn't appoint the inspector general or anyone else to determine how long Farak was altering samples or running analyses while high. El 6 de enero de 2014, Farak se declar culpable de los cargos en su contra. "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. Who is Sonja Farak? "The need to inform defendants of government misconduct does not disappear when that misconduct was committed by a government lawyer as opposed to a government chemist.". "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. A status hearing on Penate's suit, which was filed in 2017, is scheduled for July. The next month, Ryan asked again. This threw every sample she had ever tested into question. Martha Coakley, then attorney general for the state, argued in Melendez-Diaz that a chemist's certificate contains only "neutral, objective facts." Foster Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak. 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. Velis said he stood by the findings. Farak started at Amherst lab in Aug 2004 p. 32. Privacy Policy | Soon after Dookhan's arrest, Coakley's office asked the governor to order a broader independent probe of the Hinton lab. Between the two women, 47,000 drug convictions and guilty pleas have been dismissed in the last two years, many for misdemeanor possession. In four 50-minute episodes, Netflix's latest shocker tells the story of Sonia Farak, a chemist who worked at a crime lab in Amherst, Massachusetts. "No reasonablejury could conclude that this evidence is not favorable.". Defense attorneys had. Talking Politics: Should a new government agency protect the coastline from climate change? "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. The last contact information provided by her, in response to Penates allegations, placed her residence in Hatfield, Massachusetts. Penate was convicted in December 2013 and sentenced to serve five to seven years. One thing that How to Fix a Drug Scandal makes clear is that it wasnt all Sonja Faraks fault. She started seeing a substance abuse therapist around this time. 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 . The responsibility of the mess that she created should also rest upon the shoulders of her workplace that allowed her the opportunity to indulge so freely in drugs in the first place. One colleague called her the "super woman of the lab. Local prosecutors also remained in the dark. shipped nearly 300 pages of previously undisclosed materials to local prosecutors around the state. Verner's "marching orders," he later testified, were to prosecute Farak with "what was in front of us, the car, things that were readily apparent. He recommended she lose her law license for two years; the Office of Bar Counsel later argued Kaczmarek should be disbarred. A scandal erupts, raising questions for the thousands of defendants in her cases. It was. . 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. To better estimate how many convictions will have to be reviewed because of Farak, the Supreme Judicial Court Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. "The gravity of the present case cannot be overstated," Kaczmarek wrote in her memo recommending a prison sentence of five to seven years. With your support, GBH will continue to innovate, inspire and connect through reporting you value that meets todays moments. 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. 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. The court also dismissed all meth cases processed at the lab since Farak started in 2004. Process Notes/Psychotherapy Notes Process notes are sometimes also referred to as psychotherapy notesthey're the notes you take during or after a session. Release year: 2020. Farak was a former lab chemist at a lab in Amherst, Massachusetts and was convicted of stealing and using drugs from the lab where she worked. 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. She's no longer in prison, as Farak has served her sentence. Emma Camp 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.". And both pose the obvious question about how chemists could behave so badly for years without detection. In an August 2013 email, Ryan asked Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster to review evidence taken from Farak. Though. 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." Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. A Powerful EHR to Manage a Thriving Practice. 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. 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. Since the takeover, the budget for all forensic labs across the state has been increased, by around twenty-five per cent. Lets find out. 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. The judge ordered prosecutors and defense attorneys to coordinate on identifying undisclosed emails related to documents seized from the disgraced state crime lab chemist. Both scandals undercut confidence in the criminal justice system and the validity of forensic analysis. "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. 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. Would love your thoughts, please comment. Her wrongdoings were exposed when unsealed cocaine and a crack pipe were found under her desk. Obviously, after a blunder of such scale, no one would want their samples checked from the same lab. Why Won't Maryland Sell Me a Goddamn Beer? Its no big deal, 14-year-old Farak said to the Panama City News Herald. The Hinton drug lab, operated by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, appears to have been run largely on the honor system. 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. 3.3.2023 5:30 PM, Joe Lancaster But she worried they might be privileged as health information. A hearing on their motions is scheduled next month. Sonja Farak, who worked as a chemist at the Amherst drug lab since 2004, was arrested in January 2013 after one of her co-workers noticed samples were missing from evidence. Deborah Becker Twitter Host/ReporterDeborah Becker is a senior correspondent and host at WBUR. She is not active on any social media platform and has kept her distance from the press. "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.". Despite her status as a free woman (who has seemingly disappeared from the public eye), Farak's wrongdoings continue to make waves in the Massachusetts courts. mentioned a New England Patriots game on Saturday, Dec. 24 which corresponded with a game date in 2011. Having barely investigated her, prosecutors indicted Farak only for the samples in her possession the day she was caught. But a crucial issue was not before the court. 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. Farak apparently still tested each caseunlike Annie Dookhan, another Massachusetts chemist who was arrested five months prior to Farak for fabricating test results. Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. Farak struggled with mental health throughout her life, the documentary series explains. He also 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. 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. Inwardly though, Sonja was struggling. Follow us so you don't miss a thing! ", The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. Introduction. Read More: Where is Sonja Farak Sister Now? When defense lawyers asked to see evidence for themselves, state prosecutors smeared them as pursuing a "fishing expedition.". Dookhan was now spending less time at her lab bench and more time testifying in court about her results. "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.". But unlike with Dookhan, no one launched a bigger investigation of Farak. May 2003 started working in Hinton drug lab p. 14. Even the master's degree on her rsum was fabricated. 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. One of the reasons for the decrepit state and standard of the Amherst lab was the lack of funds. ", Prosecutors maintained that Faraks rogue behavior spanned just a few months. For years, Sonja Farak was addicted to cocaine, methamphetamine, and amphetamines, the kind of drugs usually bought from street dealers in covert transactions that carry the constant risk of arrest. They tend to be more freeform notes about the session and your impressions of the client's statements and demeanour. The Amherst lab had called state police when the two missing samples were noticed in 2013. The Farak documents indicate she used drugs on the very day she certified samples as heroin in Penates case. Gainey added that Healey is pleased with their conclusion that prosecutors and the state police acted appropriately. | 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. 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. He didn't buy her quibbling that there's a difference between an explicit lie and obfuscation by grammar. Four months after Ryan found the worksheets, Judge Kinder 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. 3.3.2023 5:45 PM, Jacob Sullum Exhausted from the ongoing scandal in Boston, state officials were desperate for damage control. This very well could have been the end of the investigative trail but for a few stubborn defense lawyers, who appealed the ruling. "I suspect that if another entity was in the mix"perhaps the inspector general or an independent investigator"the Attorney General's Office would have treated the Farak case much more seriously and would have been much more reluctant to hide the ball," Ryan writes in an email. Name. The story of the intertwining Farak and Penate evidence began in January 2013, when state police arrested Farak and searched her car. She was struggling to suppress mental health issues, depression in particular, and she tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. Why did she do that and where has it left her? Scalia may as well have been describing Dookhan. "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." When a Therapy Session starts, the software automatically creates a To-Do list item reminding users to create the relevant documentation. In Farak's car, police found a "works kit"crack cocaine, a spatula, and copper mesh, often used as a pipe filter. Ryan finally viewed the file in the attorney generals offices in October 2014. 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. Out of "an abundance of caution," Kaczmarek didn't present them to the grand jury that was convened to determine whether to indict Farak. Patrick appointed the state inspector general to look into it. Chemist Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to "tampering with evidence" back in 2014 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. 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. motion with Hampden Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Kinder to see the evidence for himself. After graduating from Portsmouth High School, Farak attended the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she got a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry in 2000. It features the true story of Sonja Farak, a former state drug lab chemist in Massachusetts who was arrested in 2013 for consuming the drugs she was supposed to test and tampering with the.