What Actor Died From Vampire Diaries In Real Life, Can Teachers See If You Unenroll On Google Classroom, Articles S

Her ar-rest led to the dismissal of thousands of drug cases in Massachusetts. Farak admitted in testimony that she began using drugs almost as soon as she started working at the Massachusetts State Crime Lab in Amherst. To multiple courts' amazement, her incessant drug use never caught the attention of her co-workers. 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. This might not have mattered as much if the investigators had followed the evidence that Farak had been using drugs for at least a year and almost certainly longer. 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. Joseph Ballou, lead investigator for the state police, called them the most important documents from the car. 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 evidence to cover up her tracks. "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.". food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. In Farak's car, police found a "works kit"crack cocaine, a spatula, and copper mesh, often used as a pipe filter. . 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. It's been like this forever, or at least since girlhood. 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! 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. Scalia may as well have been describing Dookhan. motion on behalf of another client to see the evidence. In November 2013, Dookhan pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, and perjury. In court, she added that there was "no smoking gun" in the evidence. 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. They wrote that Lee, disabled by a stew of mental ailments, [spent] her hours surfing the Web in a haze.. He was floored when he found the worksheets. 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. Verner, who testified that he didn't "micromanage" Kaczmarek, escaped criticism. Investigators either missed or declined opportunities to dig very deep. The attorney general's officeKaczmarek or her supervisorscould have asked a judge to determine whether the worksheets were actually privileged, as Kaczmarek later acknowledged. Thanks largely to the prosecutors' deception, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in October 2018 was forced to dismiss thousands of cases Farak may never have even touched, including every single conviction based on evidence processed at the Amherst lab from 2009 to the day of Farak's arrest in 2013. Farak apparently still tested each caseunlike Annie Dookhan, another Massachusetts chemist who was arrested five months prior to Farak for fabricating test results. 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. Investigators found that Sonja Farak tested drug samples and testified in court while under the influence of methamphetamines, ketamine, cocaine, LSD and other drugs between 2005 and 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.". 3.3.2023 5:45 PM, Jacob Sullum "No reasonablejury could conclude that this evidence is not favorable.". | On paper, these numbers made Dookhan the most productive chemist at Hinton; the next most productive averaged around 300 samples per month. Her role was to test for the presence of illegal substances, which could be instrumental in thousands of . 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.". Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education. "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. GBH News brings you the stories, local voices, and big ideas that shape our world. She had been accused of intentional infliction of emotional distress in addition to the conspiracy to violate [Penates] civil rights.. 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. The fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. 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. Join us. May 2003 started working in Hinton drug lab p. 14. Kaczmarek, along with former assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and John Verner, all face possible sanctions. Instead, Coakley's office served as gatekeeper to evidence that could have untangled the scandal and freed thousands of people from prison and jail years earlier, or at least wiped their improper convictions off the books. (Netflix) A former state chemist, Sonja Farak, made headlines in 2013 when she was arrested for stealing and using drugs from a laboratory. ", Prosecutors nationwide pretty uniformly backed this argument, which the Supreme Court rejected in a 54 opinion. Farak also had an apparent obsession for her therapists husband, as she was reported to have a folder that shed put together about him, documenting her obsession. Sonja Farak was a chemist for a state crime lab in Massachusetts. 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 crucial fact of her longstanding and frequent drug use also never made it into Farak's trial, much less to defendants appealing convictions predicated on her tainted analyses. 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. Instead, Kaczmarek provided copies to Farak's own attorney and asked that all evidence from Farak's car, including the worksheets, be kept away from prying defense attorneys representing the thousands of people convicted of drug crimes based on Farak's work. 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. Farak worked for the Amherst Drug Lab in Massachusetts for 9 years when she was convicted of stealing and using them. "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. She was struggling to suppress mental health issues, depression in particular, and she tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the Amherst lab in 2004. She also starting dipping into police-submitted samples, a "whole other level of morality," as Farak called it during a fall 2015 special grand jury session. Among other items, Kaczmarek Soon after Dookhan's arrest, Coakley's office asked the governor to order a broader independent probe of the Hinton lab. Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. In 2014, former Amherst drug lab chemist Sonja Farak was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison after it was discovered that she stole and used drugs that she was entrusted to test. mentioned a New England Patriots game on Saturday, Dec. 24 which corresponded with a game date in 2011. At least 11,000 cases have already been dismissed due to fallout from the scandal, with thousands more likely to come. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, Sonja Farak is the subject of Netflix's "How To Fix a Drug Scandal. 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. How to Fix a Drug Scandal is an American true crime documentary miniseries that was released on Netflix on April 1, 2020. 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." 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.". Penate alleged Kaczmarek's actions violated his "Brady rights," which require prosecutors to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to defense counsel. Between 2005 and 2013, Sonja Farak was performing laboratory tests at a state drug lab in Amherst while under the influence of narcotics. Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak. Both scandals undercut confidence in the criminal justice system and the validity of forensic analysis. The defense bar also demanded answers on how such crucial evidence stayed buried for so long. Because she did so, Plaintiff served more than five years in a state prison.". ordered a report on the history of her illicit behavior. Two detectives found Farak at a courthouse waiting to testify on an unrelated matter. Kaczmarek had obtained the evidence at issue while she was prosecuting Farak on state charges of tampering with evidence and drug possession. The newest true crime series from Netflix, How to Fix a Drug Scandal, was released on April 1, 2020. 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. Sonja Farak was a chemist at a state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 2005 to 2013. Netflix's latest true-crime series, How to Fix a Drug Scandal, dives deep into a shocking Massachusetts scandal, one that started in the humble confines of an underfunded drug testing lab and ended with an entire system in question. 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. 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. During the next four years, she would periodically sober up and then relapse. With your support, GBH will continue to innovate, inspire and connect through reporting you value that meets todays moments. As Kaczmarek herself later observed, Farak essentially had "a drugstore at her disposal" from her first day at the Amherst lab. 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. Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. "If she were suffering from back injurymaybe she took some oxys?" "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. Maybe it's not a matter of checklists or reminders that prosecutors have to keep their eyes open for improprieties. Investigators gave that information to Kaczmarek and the state AG's office,according tohearings before thestate board that disciplines attorneys. Instead, she submitted an intentionally vague letter to the judge claiming defense attorneys already had everything. Farak admitted to being on a list of drugs while working between 2004 and her 2013 arrest. 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. Kaczmarek argued before the BBO, and in response to Penate's lawsuit, that she was focused on prosecuting Farak and not defendants, like Penate, whose criminal cases were affected by Farak's misconduct. Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to stealing samples of drugs from an Amherst drug lab. But why were a small handful of prosecutors allowed total control over evidence about one of the worst criminal justice failures in recent memory? memo to Judge Kinder the next week, Foster said she reviewed the file, and said every document in it had already been disclosed. Hearings could help decide how many of thousands of convictions tainted by Farak's testing may be overturned. Tens of thousands of criminal drug cases were dismissed as a result of misconduct by Dookhan and Farak. Faraks notes also 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. Over time, Farak's drug use turned to cocaine, LSD and, eventually, crack. 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. As How to Fix a Drug Scandal explores, Farak had long struggled with her mental . 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. 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. Talking Politics: Should a new government agency protect the coastline from climate change? She married Lee after starting her job, but their marriage was rocky. Judge Kinder ordered her to produce all potentially privileged documents for his review to determine whether they could be disclosed. 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. Her job consisted of testing drugs that have. In a letter filed with the Supreme Court, Julianne Nassif, a lab supervisor, wrote that Hinton had "appropriate quality control" measures. "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents," Ryan wrote to the attorney general's office. Sgt. The drug lab technician was sent to prison for 18 months, but was released in 2015. 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. Among the papers they seized were handwritten worksheets Farak completed for drug-abuse therapy. 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. She was also under the influence when she took the stand during her trial. The court also dismissed all meth cases processed at the lab since Farak started in 2004. TherapyNotes. 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. It ultimately took a blatant violation to expose Dookhan, and even then her bosses twisted themselves in knots to hold on to their "super woman.". She recovered, made it through college and got a job as a chemist at the Amherst Crime Lab, where she tested confiscated drugs. She was sentenced to 18 months in jail plus five years of probation. One colleague called her the "super woman of the lab. In an August 2013 email, Ryan asked Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster to review evidence taken from Farak. Name. 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. TherapyNotes is a complete practice management system with everything you need to manage patient records, schedule appointments, meet with patients remotely, create rich documentation, and bill insurance, right at your fingertips. Foster consulted Kaczmarek about the files contents, according to an Thank you! 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. "Because on almost a daily basis Farak abused narcoticsthere is no assurance that she was able to perform chemical analysis correctly," the judge found. Dookhan's transgressions got more press attention: Her story broke first, she immediately confessed, and her misdeeds took place in big-city Boston rather than the western reaches of the state. The Farak scandal came as the state grappled with another drug lab crisis. 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. Several defense attorneys who called for the Velis-Merrigan investigation say the former judges and their state police investigators got it wrong. As he leafed through three boxes of evidence, he found the substance abuse worksheets and diaries. 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. The cocaine, found in an unsealed, completed drug-testing kit, tested negativemeaning Farak had seemingly replaced the formerly "positive" drugs with falsified substances. Its no big deal, 14-year-old Farak said to the Panama City News Herald. 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. He didn't buy her quibbling that there's a difference between an explicit lie and obfuscation by grammar. "No reasonable individual could have failed to appreciate the unlawfulness of [Kaczmarek's] actions in these circumstances," Robertson wrote in her ruling. 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. Farak signed a certification of drug samples in Penate's case on Dec. 22, 2011. And both pose the obvious question about how chemists could behave so badly for years without detection. Fue arrestada el 19 de enero de 2013. She was arrested in 2013 when the supervisor at the Amherst lab was made aware that two samples were missing. It took another three years for the truth to emerge. 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." Without access to the diaries, the Springfield judge in 2013 found that Farak had starting stealing from samples in summer 2012. The new numbers appear in a report issued by a court-designated "Special Master." Foster 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.". Please note that if your case has been identified for dismissal, it could take approximately 2-3 months for the relevant court records to be updated. Many more are likely to follow, with the total expected to exceed 50,000. ", But another co-worker was suspicious, particularly since he "never saw Dookhan in front of a microscope.". "It was almost like Dookhan wanted to get caught," one of her former co-workers told state police in 2012. 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. "The gravity of the present case cannot be overstated," Kaczmarek wrote in her memo recommending a prison sentence of five to seven years. Although the year she wrote the notes wasnt listed on the worksheet, in the six years prior to her arrest, 2011 is the only year in which Dec. 22 fell on a Thursday. It declined Farak's offer of a detailed confession in exchange for leniency, nixing the offer without even negotiating terms. But unlike with Dookhan, there were no independent investigations of Farak or the Amherst lab. Privacy Policy | Farak wasn't the first Massachusetts chemist to tamper with drug evidence. 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. 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. Farak. But unlike with Dookhan, no one launched a bigger investigation of Farak. Relying on an investigation conducted by state police, the judges 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. A drug chemist . A scandal erupts, raising questions for the thousands of defendants in her cases. Lost in the high drama of determining which individual prosecutors hid evidence was a more basic question: In scandals like these, why are decisions about evidence left to prosecutors at all? Our posture is to not delve into the twists and turns of the investigation or the report and to let it stand on its own, Merrigan said. Coakley's office finally launched a criminal investigation in July 2012, more than a year after the infraction was discovered by Dookhan's supervisors. Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. 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. Netflix released a new docu-series called "How to Fix a Drug Scandal." Farak is amongst one of the 18 defendants battling the lawsuit filed by Rolando Penate. 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. She said, It was about coping; it certainly wasnt about having fun; I dont think shes had fun in quite a while.. Release year: 2020. The lawsuit names Kaczmarek, Farak and three members of the state police. "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. Ryan finally viewed the file in the attorney generals offices in October 2014. With the Dookhan case so fresh, reporters immediately labeled Farak "the second chemist. After high school, Sonja went on to major in biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts. Months after Farak pleaded guilty in January 2014, Ryan filed a The scandal led. Dookhan was now spending less time at her lab bench and more time testifying in court about her results. denied Penates motion to dismiss the case, saying there was no evidence that Faraks misconduct extended to his case. compelled release of additional drug treatment records, which indicated Farak used a variety of drugs that she stole from the lab for years. Among the papers they seized were handwritten worksheets Farak completed for drug-abuse therapy. 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.