Privacy Policy | Thus, only defendants whose evidence she tested in the six-month window before her arrest could challenge their cases. It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. After her arrest, she received support from her parents, who showed up to her court appearances, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported. On a Friday afternoon in January 2013, a call came in to Coakley's office: "We have another Annie Dookhan out west.". 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. Powered by. The latest true crime offering from Netflix is the documentary series "How to Fix a Drug Scandal." It dives into the story of Sonja Farak, a chemist who worked for a Massachusetts state drug. 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. 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. Here are those forms with the admissions of drug use I was talking about," a state police sergeant wrote to Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek, who led Faraks prosecution, in a That settlement awaits approval by a judge. Sgt. 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. 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. Rollins said it covers "a period of time in which either now disgraced chemist Annie Dookhan, or another convicted chemist Sonja Farak ," worked there. Name. | another filing. After serving for 13 months, she was released on parole in 2015. The place was closed as soon as Faraks crimes came to light. Why did she do that and where has it left her? She is not active on any social media platform and has kept her distance from the press. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. After she was caught, Farak pleaded guilty to stealing drugs from the lab and was sentenced to prison time of 18 months. 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. But whether anyone investigated her conduct during a brief stint working at the state's Boston drug lab is at . Its unclear if Farak is still with Lee, as they have both remained out of the public eye since the case. "No reasonablejury could conclude that this evidence is not favorable.". Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015 Contributed by Shawn Musgrave (Musgrave Investigations) p. 1. The disgraced chemist was sentenced to less than two years behind bars in 2014, following her guilty pleas for stealing cocaine from the lab. Penate is seeking a new trial, contending the conviction should be reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct and evidence tainted by Farak. Several defense attorneys who called for the Velis-Merrigan investigation say the former judges and their state police investigators got it wrong. 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. 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. Even when she failed a post-arrest drug testprompting the lead investigator to quip to Kaczmarek, "I hope she doesn't have a stash in her house! One colleague called her the "super woman of the lab. Kaczmarek was now juggling two scandals on opposite sides of the state. Deval Patrick's office didn't learn about the protocol breach until December 2011. 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. Her job consisted of testing drugs that have. 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. 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. Kaczmarek, along with former assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and John Verner, all face possible sanctions. Farak was released from prison in 2015 and has kept a low profile since. Foster's first stepper ethical obligations and office protocolshould have been to look through the evidence to see what had already been handed over. It's not as bad as Dookhan, they asserted and implied over and over. Fue arrestada el 19 de enero de 2013. 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. 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.". Terms Of Use, (Annie Dookhan (left) and Sonja Farak, Associated Press). 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." A drug chemist . Despite clear indications that Farak used a variety of narcoticsher worksheets mentioned phentermine, and that vial of powdered oxycodone-acetaminophen had been found at her benchKaczmarek also proceeded as if crack cocaine were Farak's sole drug. The defense bar also demanded answers on how such crucial evidence stayed buried for so long. "I was totally controlled by my addiction," Farak later testified. Former chemist Annie Dookhan was convicted in 2013 on charges of improperly testing drug evidence at a drug lab in Boston. . ", Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. 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. One of the reasons for the decrepit state and standard of the Amherst lab was the lack of funds. The new numbers appear in a report issued by a court-designated "Special Master." In Farak's car, police found a "works kit"crack cocaine, a spatula, and copper mesh, often used as a pipe filter. 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. 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. Since the takeover, the budget for all forensic labs across the state has been increased, by around twenty-five per cent. When defense lawyers asked to see evidence for themselves, state prosecutors smeared them as pursuing a "fishing expedition.". Approximately one year later, she pled guilty to tampering with evidence, unlawful possession, and stealing narcotics. 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. Shown results suggesting otherwise, she copped to contaminating samples "a few times" during the previous "two to three years.". 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. As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . Months after Farak pleaded guilty in January 2014, Ryan filed a Fortunately, the courts largely ignored this shallow investigation. The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. 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. The lawsuit names Kaczmarek, Farak and three members of the state police. 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. In the only quasi-independent probe of the Farak scandal ever ordered, Attorney General Healey and a district attorney appointed two retired judges to investigate in summer 2015. If Farak found a substance was a true drug, the person it was confiscated from could be convicted of a substance-related crime. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility at GBH, Transparency in Coverage Cost-Sharing Disclosures. GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting. At some point, the attorney general's office stopped chasing leads entirely. "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.". . But a crucial issue was not before the court. Follow us so you don't miss a thing! There is no allegation of misconduct against the local prosecutors who presented the case against Penate in Hampden County Superior Court. 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. "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.". Episode 1. May 2003 started working in Hinton drug lab p. 14. The governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. Kaczmarek quoted the worksheets in a memo to her supervisor, Verner, and others, summarizing that they revealed Farak's "struggle with substance abuse." wrote she "tried to resist using @ work, but ended up failing." The Netflix docuseries ends by acknowledging that Farak received an 18-month sentence, and that defense attorney Luke Ryan was able . 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. 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 . Though. Four months after Ryan found the worksheets, Judge Kinder motion on behalf of another client to see the evidence. "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. Per her own court testimony, as shown in the docu-series, Farak started working at a state drug lab in Amherst in 2004. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. Who is Sonja Farak? Foster consulted Kaczmarek about the files contents, according to an But she insisted the drugs didn't compromise her worka belief that one judge would aptly declare "belies logic.". Her ar-rest led to the dismissal of thousands of drug cases in Massachusetts. Her answer: more than eight years before her arrest. This very well could have been the end of the investigative trail but for a few stubborn defense lawyers, who appealed the ruling. shipped nearly 300 pages of previously undisclosed materials to local prosecutors around the state. At the time of Penates trial, the state Attorney Generals Office contended Faraks misdeeds dated back only as far as 2012. For people with disabilities needing assistance with the Public Files, contact Glenn Heath at 617-300-3268. Foster replied that because the investigation against Farak was ongoing, she couldnt let him see it. She married Lee after starting her job, but their marriage was rocky. Farak is amongst one of the 18 defendants battling the lawsuit filed by Rolando Penate. Without even interviewing Foster, they determined there was "no evidence" of obstruction of justice by her, by Kaczmarek, or by any state prosecutor. "It was almost like Dookhan wanted to get caught," one of her former co-workers told state police in 2012. It had no surveillance cameras, laughable security on evidence safes, and "laissez faire" management, which the state inspector general determined was the "most glaring factor that led to the Dookhan crisis. He recommended she lose her law license for two years; the Office of Bar Counsel later argued Kaczmarek should be disbarred. Despite such unequivocal findings of misconduct, the court removed language about Kaczmarek and Foster from notification letters to those whose cases have been dismissed, which will be sent out in early 2019. 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.". In 2012, she began taking from co-workers' samples, forging intake forms and editing the lab database to cover her tracks. Penate was convicted in December 2013 and sentenced to serve five to seven years. Officials recognized the worksheets for what they were: near-indisputable confessions. This was not true, as Nassif's department later conceded. Instead, she submitted an intentionally vague letter to the judge claiming defense attorneys already had everything. In a letter filed with the Supreme Court, Julianne Nassif, a lab supervisor, wrote that Hinton had "appropriate quality control" measures. Farak admitted in testimony that she began using drugs almost as soon as she started working at the Massachusetts State Crime Lab in Amherst. Defense attorneys had. I felt euphoric, Kogan wrote of Farak. As federal food benefits decline, Mass. Many more are likely to follow, with the total expected to exceed 50,000. Over the next four years, Farak consumed nearly all of it. 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. High Massachusetts Lab Chemist Causes Thousands Of Drug Cases To Be Dismissed. The attorney general's representative at these hearings was Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster, a recent hire. The prosecutors have been tied to the drug lab scandal involving disgraced former state chemist Sonja Farak, who admitted to stealing and using drugs from an Amherst state lab. 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. Perhaps, as criminal justice scandals inevitably emerge, we need to get more independent eyes on the evidence from the start. The Farak documents indicate she used drugs on the very day she certified samples as heroin in Penates case. Maybe it's not a matter of checklists or reminders that prosecutors have to keep their eyes open for improprieties. 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. The charges against Penate were dismissed after Farak's conviction. 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. This is merely a fishing expedition, Foster wrote in 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.". 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. "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. Lets find out. The Dookhan prosecution was barely underway, a grand jury having returned indictments a few weeks earlier. (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. The case of Rolando Penate has become a leading example for lawyers calling for further investigation into alleged misconduct by prosecutors who handled documents seized from Sonja Farak, the Amherst crime-lab chemist convicted of stealing and tampering with drug samples. 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." Foster 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.". "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. He was floored when he found the worksheets. She couldn't be sure which cases these were, Dookhan told investigators. At least 11,000 cases have already been dismissed due to fallout from the scandal, with thousands more likely to come. A status hearing on Penate's suit, which was filed in 2017, is scheduled for July. The lax security and regulations of the place and the negligent supervision of the employees and the stock of standards are the reasons why Farak was encouraged to do what she did. 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. 3.4.2023 8:00 AM, Reason Staff 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. 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. A Powerful EHR to Manage a Thriving Practice. He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. 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. The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the Amherst crime . Without access to the diaries, the Springfield judge in 2013 found that Farak had starting stealing from samples in summer 2012. After serving just a year of her 18 month sentence, Farak was released from prison in 2015. It was an astoundingly light touch for the second state chemist arrested in six months. According to her teammates, She was the best center in the league last year, and they [felt] stronger with her in there than with some guys.. 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." As extensively detailed in How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Farak was arrested on January 19, 2013. 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.". Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. Among the papers they seized were handwritten worksheets Farak completed for drug-abuse therapy. As . As the state's top court put it, the criminal investigation into Farak was "cursory at best.". | Between 2005 and 2013, Sonja Farak was performing laboratory tests at a state drug lab in Amherst while under the influence of narcotics. To better estimate how many convictions will have to be reviewed because of Farak, the Supreme Judicial Court 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. 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. Out of "an abundance of caution," Kaczmarek didn't present them to the grand jury that was convened to determine whether to indict Farak. "As the gatekeeper to this evidence, she failed to turn over documents, and she adamantly opposed the requests for access. She grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. 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. Kaczmarek had obtained the evidence at issue while she was prosecuting Farak on state charges of tampering with evidence and drug possession. She even made her own crack in the lab. She soon crossed all these lines. Process Notes/Psychotherapy Notes Process notes are sometimes also referred to as psychotherapy notesthey're the notes you take during or after a session. 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." It declined Farak's offer of a detailed confession in exchange for leniency, nixing the offer without even negotiating terms. When grand jury materials were eventually released to defense attorneys, then, they did not mention that these documents existed. As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. The governor didn't appoint the inspector general or anyone else to determine how long Farak was altering samples or running analyses while high. After weeks of hearings, a "special hearing officer" selected by the board recommended potential sanctions against them all. (Conveniently, they also found a Patriots schedule from 2011 in the car.). ", Prosecutors maintained that Faraks rogue behavior spanned just a few months. The story of the intertwining Farak and Penate evidence began in January 2013, when state police arrested Farak and searched her car. They pulled her aside as she walked back to the courthouse from her car, where she had smoked "a fair amount of crack" during her lunch break. Stream GBH's Award-Winning Content For Parents And Children. The fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. 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. Mucha gente que vio el programa se pregunta: dnde est Sonja Farak ahora? YouTube Meier put the number at 40,323 defendants, though some have called that an overestimate. Who is Sonja Farak, the former state drug lab chemist featured in the show? In worksheet notes dated Thursday, Dec. 22, Farak wrote she "tried to resist using @ work, but ended up failing." Although the year she wrote the notes wasn't listed . 1. The Attorney Generals Office, Velis and Merrigan and the state police declined to answer questions about the handling of the Farak evidence. 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. The next month, Ryan asked again. Foster said that Kaczmarek told her all relevant evidence had been turned over and that her supervisor told her to write the letter, though both denied these claims. The former judges and the state police officers who helped them conducted a thorough review, said Emalie Gainey, spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey. 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. "Because on almost a daily basis Farak abused narcoticsthere is no assurance that she was able to perform chemical analysis correctly," the judge found. Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak. They wrote that Lee, disabled by a stew of mental ailments, [spent] her hours surfing the Web in a haze.. The number is 888-999-2881. One thing that How to Fix a Drug Scandal makes clear is that it wasnt all Sonja Faraks fault.
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