Kaczmarek, along with former assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and John Verner, all face possible sanctions. Her role was to test for the presence of illegal substances, which could be instrumental in thousands of . With your support, GBH will continue to innovate, inspire and connect through reporting you value that meets todays moments. TherapyNotes. Emma Camp ", Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. (Featured Image Credit: Mass Live). 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. It's not as bad as Dookhan, they asserted and implied over and over. 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 charges against Penate were dismissed after Farak's conviction. 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.". His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. 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. Her wrongdoings were exposed when unsealed cocaine and a crack pipe were found under her desk. Defense attorneys had. 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. As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . Without access to the diaries, the Springfield judge in 2013 found that Farak had starting stealing from samples in summer 2012. noted the mental health worksheets found in Faraks car, which had not been released. . Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal Story: 5 Fast Facts. The court also dismissed all meth cases processed at the lab since Farak started in 2004. Faraks wife had her own mental health problems, and according to Rolling Stone, Farak would have conflict with her wife every night at home. Over time, Farak's drug use turned to cocaine, LSD and, eventually, crack. Compromised drug samples often fit the definition. 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. Most important, they found seven worksheets from Farak's substance abuse therapy. 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. Local prosecutors also remained in the dark. 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. Joseph Ballou, lead investigator for the state police, called them the most important documents from the car. 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. It declined Farak's offer of a detailed confession in exchange for leniency, nixing the offer without even negotiating terms. 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. This not only led to people getting a reprieve from prison but also filing their own lawsuits against the injustice they had to suffer. "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 report Farak as a young. 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. Though. Listen Live: Classic and Contemporary Celtic, Listen Live: Cape, Coast and Islands NPR Station, Boston nonprofit Street2Ivy is producing this generation's entrepreneurs. 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. This was not true, as Nassif's department later conceded. "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.". I felt euphoric, Kogan wrote of Farak. 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. In 2017, a different judge ruled that Foster's actions constituted a "fraud upon the court," calling the letter "deliberately misleading." concluded there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or obstruction of justice in matters related to the Farak 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. 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. 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. She had never quashed a subpoena before, but supervisors told her to fend off motions about Farak. The scandal led. During the next four years, she would periodically sober up and then relapse. 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. After high school, Sonja went on to major in biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts. 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. The governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. According to the notes, Farak thought it gave her energy, helped her to get things done and not procrastinate, feel more positive., Her partner Nikki Lee testified before a grand jury that she herself had tried cocaine, that she had observed Farak using cocaine in 2000, and that she had marijuana in her house when police officers arrived to search the premises as part of their investigation of Farak., In Faraks testimony during a grand jury investigation, she said that she became a recreational drug user during graduate school and used cocaine, marihuana, and ecstasy. She also said she used heroin one time and was nervous and sick and hated every minute of it [and had] no desire to use [it] again., Farak met and settled down with Nikki Lee in her 20s. Regarding the cases that she had handled, the Massachusetts courts threw out every case in the Amherst lab during her tenure. 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. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the lab. They tend to be more freeform notes about the session and your impressions of the client's statements and demeanour. 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. Each employee had a unique swipe card, but Farak simply used a physical key to get in after hours and on weekends. Terms Of Use, (Annie Dookhan (left) and Sonja Farak, Associated Press). Accessibility | He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." He didn't buy her quibbling that there's a difference between an explicit lie and obfuscation by grammar. Deborah Becker Twitter Host/ReporterDeborah Becker is a senior correspondent and host at WBUR. She had unrestricted access to the evidence room. 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. 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. They wrote that Lee, disabled by a stew of mental ailments, [spent] her hours surfing the Web in a haze.. A final decision is still pending and must be approved by the state Supreme Judicial Court. Judge Kinder ordered her to produce all potentially privileged documents for his review to determine whether they could be disclosed. compelled release of additional drug treatment records, which indicated Farak used a variety of drugs that she stole from the lab for years. State police took these worksheets from Farak's car in January 2013, the same day they arrested her for tampering with evidence and for cocaine possession. The defense bar had raised concerns that prosecutors might be "perceived as having a stake" in such an investigation. Faraks notes also ", In 2004, her first full year at the lab, Dookhan reported analyzing approximately 700 samples per month. This threw every sample she had ever tested into question. A year later, in October 2014, prosecutors relented, granting access to the full evidence in Farak's case to attorney Luke Ryan. Her ar-rest led to the dismissal of thousands of drug cases in Massachusetts. | A scandal erupts, raising questions for the thousands of defendants in her cases. They never searched Farak's computer or her home. "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. At some point, the attorney general's office stopped chasing leads entirely. Farak was getting high off the confiscated drugs police sent her way before replacing the evidence with fake drugs. At least 11,000 cases have already been dismissed due to fallout from the scandal, with thousands more likely to come. This story is an effort to reconstruct what was known about Farak and Dookhan's crimes, and when, based on court filings, diaries, and interviews with the major players. Kaczmarek quoted the worksheets in a memo to her supervisor, Verner, and others, summarizing that they revealed Farak's "struggle with substance abuse." Sonja Farak was a chemist at a state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 2005 to 2013. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015. "Whether law enforcement officials overlooked these papers or intentionally suppressed them is a question for another day.". According to a newspaper article from 1992, she was the first female in Rhode Island to be on a high school football team. 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 . Relying on an investigation conducted by state police, the judges A local prosecutor also asked Ballou to look into a case Farak had tested as far back as 2005. Follow us so you don't miss a thing! "No reasonablejury could conclude that this evidence is not favorable.". Tens of thousands of criminal drug cases were dismissed as a result of misconduct by Dookhan and Farak. Approximately one year later, she pled guilty to tampering with evidence, unlawful possession, and stealing narcotics. Farak worked for the Amherst Drug Lab in Massachusetts for 9 years when she was convicted of stealing and using them. El 6 de enero de 2014, Farak se declar culpable de los cargos en su contra. Farak admitted in testimony that she began using drugs almost as soon as she started working at the Massachusetts State Crime Lab in Amherst. Her answer: more than eight years before her arrest. If Farak found a substance was a true drug, the person it was confiscated from could be convicted of a substance-related crime. She was sentenced in 2014 to 18 months in prison and 5 years of probation. Velis said he stood by the findings. Former chemist Annie Dookhan was convicted in 2013 on charges of improperly testing drug evidence at a drug lab in Boston. Get all the latest from Sanditon on GBH Passport, How one Brookline studio helps artists with disabilities thrive. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. The twin Massachusetts drug lab scandals are unprecedented in the sheer number of cases thrown out because of forensic misconduct. Shawn Musgrave She started smoking crack cocaine in 2011 and was soon using it 10 to 12 times a day. Episode 2. "The gravity of the present case cannot be overstated," Kaczmarek wrote in her memo recommending a prison sentence of five to seven years. 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. If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. 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. Read More: Where is Sonja Farak Sister Now? Foster protested that portions of the evidentiary file in question might be privileged or not subject to disclosure. She's no longer in prison, as Farak has served her sentence. 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. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015 Contributed by Shawn Musgrave (Musgrave Investigations) p. 1. This immediately provoked questions about the thousands of cases in which her findings had contributed to the imprisonment of an individual. You can try, Suspensions and a reprimand proposed for prosecutors admonished in drug lab scandal. Meier put the number at 40,323 defendants, though some have called that an overestimate. food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. Out of "an abundance of caution," Kaczmarek didn't present them to the grand jury that was convened to determine whether to indict Farak. 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. Her job consisted of testing drugs that have. Join us. "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. But Ryan, who represented Penate, suspected it was more extensive. Among other items, Kaczmarek The hotline is open Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. This article originally appeared in print under the headline "The Chemists and the Cover-Up". 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." "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents," Ryan wrote to the attorney general's office. 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.". GBH News brings you the stories, local voices, and big ideas that shape our world. In 2012, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court foundegregious prosecutorial misconduct after an assistant district attorney withheldevidence a judge had ordered him toproduce for the defense of a teenageraccused of statutory rape. State prosecutors hadnt provided this evidence to other district attorneys offices contending with the Farak fallout, either. Instead, she submitted an intentionally vague letter to the judge claiming defense attorneys already had everything. She was trying to suppress mental health issues, depression in specific, and she attempted to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. Since the takeover, the budget for all forensic labs across the state has been increased, by around twenty-five per cent. After serving just a year of her 18 month sentence, Farak was released from prison in 2015. The justices ordered Healey's department to cover all costs of notifying all defendants whose cases were dismissed. Penate was convicted in December 2013 and sentenced to serve five to seven years. "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. According to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Farak graduated with awards and distinctions. From the April 2023 issue, Billy Binion In Farak's car, police found a "works kit"crack cocaine, a spatula, and copper mesh, often used as a pipe filter. Still, the state was acquiring evidence. motion with Hampden Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Kinder to see the evidence for himself. Where is Sonja now? 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's reports were central to thousands of cases, and the fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into "urge-ful" samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. Both scandals undercut confidence in the criminal justice system and the validity of forensic analysis. Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. The disgraced chemist was sentenced to less than two years behind bars in 2014, following her guilty pleas for stealing cocaine from the lab. As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. The attorney general's officeKaczmarek or her supervisorscould have asked a judge to determine whether the worksheets were actually privileged, as Kaczmarek later acknowledged. Release year: 2020. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. It took another three years for the truth to emerge. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. She was struggling to suppress mental health issues, depression in particular, and she tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. Sonja Farak had admitted to stealing and using drugs from the drug lab where she worked as a chemist for around 9 years. Talking Politics: Should a new government agency protect the coastline from climate change? 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 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. But why were a small handful of prosecutors allowed total control over evidence about one of the worst criminal justice failures in recent memory? The Farak documents indicate she used drugs on the very day she certified samples as heroin in Penates case. In January 2014, she pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and drug possession. Even though Farak found a job after graduation and was settled down with her partner, she continued to struggle with depression and felt like a stranger in her body. More than 24,000 convictions in 16,449 cases tainted by former state chemist Sonja Farak have been dismissed in a court case brought by the ACLU of Massachusetts, the Committee of Public Counsel Services (CPCS), and law firm Fick & Marx LLP. One of the reasons for the decrepit state and standard of the Amherst lab was the lack of funds. 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 grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. Penate argued the court should follow those findings. But whether anyone investigated her conduct during a brief stint working at the state's Boston drug lab is at . As federal food benefits decline, Mass. Sonja Farak, a state forensic chemist in western Massachusetts, was minutes away from testifying in a drug case in early 2013 when attorneys learned she was about to be arrested on charges of. The Amherst Bulletin reported that her medical records indicated that she only became addicted to drugs once she started working at the lab, in 2004. Shortly into her role at Amherst, Farak decided to try liquid methamphetamine to ease her personal struggles. Instead, Kaczmarek proceeded as if the substance abuse was a recent development. 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." shipped nearly 300 pages of previously undisclosed materials to local prosecutors around the state.
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