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. 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. But whether anyone investigated her conduct during a brief stint working at the state's Boston drug lab is at . The information showed that Farak sought therapy for drug addiction and that her misconduct had been ongoing for years. How to write better therapy progress notes: 10 examples Dookhan was now spending less time at her lab bench and more time testifying in court about her results. "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. Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak. Joseph . Sonja Farak had admitted to stealing and using drugs from the drug lab where she worked as a chemist for around 9 years. "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. Robertson rejected Kaczmarek's claims she should not be held responsible for the turning over of exculpatory evidence because she was not part of the "prosecution team" in Penate's case. They wrote that Lee, disabled by a stew of mental ailments, [spent] her hours surfing the Web in a haze.. Foster "We shouldn't be in the position of having to be saying, 'Don't close your eyes to the duration and scope of misconduct that may affect a whole lot of cases,'" the exasperated Massachusetts chief justice told prosecutors during oral arguments. Such strong claims were too hasty at best, since investigators had not yet finished basic searches; three days later, police executed a warrant for a duffel bag they found stuffed behind Farak's desk. Shawn Musgrave is a reporter who was until recently based in Boston. 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. 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.". You can try, Suspensions and a reprimand proposed for prosecutors admonished in drug lab scandal. 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. Who Are Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan? How to Fix a Drug Scandal True Story 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 . Her notes record on-the-job drug use ranging from small nips of the lab's baseline. If there's ever any uncertainty over "whether exculpatory information should be disclosed," the Supreme Judicial Court later wrote, "the prosecutor must file a motion for a protective order and must present the information for a judge to review.". Massachusetts DA seeks to vacate thousands of drug convictions - CNN She started doing drugs almost as soon as she took the job at Amherst, but it was after years of negligence on her superiors part that her actions finally came to light. concluded there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or obstruction of justice in matters related to the Farak case. 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. This not only led to people getting a reprieve from prison but also filing their own lawsuits against the injustice they had to suffer. The lawsuit names Kaczmarek, Farak and three members of the state police. 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. Her role was to test for the presence of illegal substances, which could be instrumental in thousands of . 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. The defense bar also demanded answers on how such crucial evidence stayed buried for so long. A scandal erupts, raising questions for the thousands of defendants in her cases. shipped nearly 300 pages of previously undisclosed materials to local prosecutors around the state. 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. Due to the conviction, prosecutors were forced to dismiss more than . Tens of thousands of criminal drug cases were dismissed as a result of misconduct by Dookhan and Farak. The story of the intertwining Farak and Penate evidence began in January 2013, when state police arrested Farak and searched her car. PDF Applying Routine Activity Theory: A Case Study of the Sonya Farak Drug "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 was sentenced to prison in 2013. | In Farak's car, police found a "works kit"crack cocaine, a spatula, and copper mesh, often used as a pipe filter. Without access to the diaries, the Springfield judge in 2013 found that Farak had starting stealing from samples in summer 2012. A federal judge has rejected claims from an embattled former state prosecutor that she is protected from liability in the fallout over a Massachusetts drug lab scandal. 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. She grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. In a March 2013 He didn't buy her quibbling that there's a difference between an explicit lie and obfuscation by grammar. 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. Over the next four years, Farak consumed nearly all of it. Yet Dookhan's brazen crimes went undetected for ages. 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. GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting. Between 2005 and 2013, Sonja Farak was performing laboratory tests at a state drug lab in Amherst while under the influence of narcotics. Massachusetts drug lab scandal tied to Sonja Farak and Hinton Lab Sonja Farak. 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. Where Is Sonja Farak Now? Thanks to Farak's testimony and those diary worksheets, we now know that, soon after joining the Amherst lab in 2004, Farak started skimming from the methamphetamine "standard," an undiluted oil used as a reference against which suspected meth samples are compared. The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the Amherst crime . He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." Who Is Sonja Farak From Netflix Docu-Series How To Fix A Drug Scandal Who is Sonja Farak, the former state drug lab chemist featured in the show? Both scandals undercut confidence in the criminal justice system and the validity of forensic analysis. "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. It included information about the type of drugs she tampered with. 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. Foster's first stepper ethical obligations and office protocolshould have been to look through the evidence to see what had already been handed over. Deborah Becker Twitter Host/ReporterDeborah Becker is a senior correspondent and host at WBUR. 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.". They tend to be more freeform notes about the session and your impressions of the client's statements and demeanour. "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. This past Tuesday, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court filed a report saying that more than 24,000 convictions in 16,449 cases have been dismissed as a result of foul play by a former state drug lab chemist. This was not true, as Nassif's department later conceded. Support GBH. 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. A drug chemist . 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. Why Won't Maryland Sell Me a Goddamn Beer? 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. She couldn't be sure which cases these were, Dookhan told investigators. Poetically, that landmark case originated from the Hinton lab, although Dookhan didn't conduct the analysis in question. . The last contact information provided by her, in response to Penates allegations, placed her residence in Hatfield, Massachusetts. email highlighted in the Velis-Merrigan report. Who is Sonja Farak? How to Fix a Drug Scandal: behind a staggering Netflix crime docuseries Kaczmarek was now juggling two scandals on opposite sides of the state. 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. ", Prosecutors maintained that Faraks rogue behavior spanned just a few months. If Farak found a substance was a true drug, the person it was confiscated from could be convicted of a substance-related crime. Since then, she has kept a low profile. mentioned a New England Patriots game on Saturday, Dec. 24 which corresponded with a game date in 2011. Farak worked for the Amherst Drug Lab in Massachusetts for 9 years when she was convicted of stealing and using them. The cocaine, found in an unsealed, completed drug-testing kit, tested negativemeaning Farak had seemingly replaced the formerly "positive" drugs with falsified substances. She was released in 2015, as reported by Mass Live. Inwardly though, Sonja was struggling. Farak. They never searched Farak's computer or her home. This is the story of Farak's drug-induced wrongdoings, and it's the. memo, Kaczmarek told her supervisors that "Farak's admissions on her 'emotional worksheets' recovered from her car detail her struggle with substance abuse. But Ryan, who represented Penate, suspected it was more extensive. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. But unlike with Dookhan, there were no independent investigations of Farak or the Amherst lab. Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. 3.4.2023 8:00 AM, Reason Staff On another worksheet chronicling her struggle not to use, she described 12 of the next 13 samples assigned to her for testing as "urge-ful.". A Powerful EHR to Manage a Thriving Practice. | Where Is Sonja Farak From Netflix's 'Drug Scandal' Doc Now? In the aftermath, the court felt it necessary to make clear that "no prosecutorhas the authority to decline to disclose exculpatory information.". As . According to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Farak graduated with awards and distinctions. But unlike with Dookhan, no one launched a bigger investigation of Farak. 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. Powered by. Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. 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." Another worksheet had the month and weekdays for December 2011, which police easily could have determined by cross-referencing holidays or looking up a New England Patriots game mentioned in one entry. Sonja Farak in How to Fix a Drug Scandal. After high school, Sonja went on to major in biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts.
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