Farak is amongst one of the 18 defendants battling the lawsuit filed by Rolando Penate. 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 released in 2015, as reported by Mass Live. concluded there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or obstruction of justice in matters related to the Farak case. She was also under the influence when she took the stand during her trial. 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
Maybe it's not a matter of checklists or reminders that prosecutors have to keep their eyes open for improprieties. She's no longer in prison, as Farak has served her sentence. "If she were suffering from back injurymaybe she took some oxys?" Farak apparently still tested each caseunlike Annie Dookhan, another Massachusetts chemist who was arrested five months prior to Farak for fabricating test results. Farak worked under the influence of drugs for nine years - from 2004 to 2013 - before she was caught. A. 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.". It didnt matter whether or not she was the one who did the testing or some other chemist. Sonja Farak in How to Fix a Drug Scandal. This not only led to people getting a reprieve from prison but also filing their own lawsuits against the injustice they had to suffer. Below is an outline of her charges. She had been accused of intentional infliction of emotional distress in addition to the conspiracy to violate [Penates] civil rights.. But Ryan, who represented Penate, suspected it was more extensive. A few months before her arrest, Farak's counselor recommended in-patient rehab. I felt euphoric, Kogan wrote of Farak. Penate argued the court should follow those findings. The Attorney Generals Office, Velis and Merrigan and the state police declined to answer questions about the handling of the Farak evidence. The governor didn't appoint the inspector general or anyone else to determine how long Farak was altering samples or running analyses while high. She received the American Institute of Chemists Award in her final year as well as a Crimson and Gray Award from the school a year before, which recognized her dedication, commitment and unselfishness in the enrichment of student life at WPI. A Rolling Stone piece on Farak also indicated that she graduated with high distinction from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. 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. After Faraks arrest in 2013, police found pages of mental health worksheets in her car indicating she'd struggled with drug addiction since at least 2011. Listen Live: Classic and Contemporary Celtic, Listen Live: Cape, Coast and Islands NPR Station, Boston nonprofit Street2Ivy is producing this generation's entrepreneurs. The special hearing officer found Kaczmarek "displayed no remorse" and was "not candid" during the disciplinary proceedings. | Its unclear if Farak is still with Lee, as they have both remained out of the public eye since the case. 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. Coakley's office finally launched a criminal investigation in July 2012, more than a year after the infraction was discovered by Dookhan's supervisors. ", But another co-worker was suspicious, particularly since he "never saw Dookhan in front of a microscope.". The scandal led. "I was totally controlled by my addiction," Farak later testified. According to a Rolling Stone piece on Farak, she struggled with depression from an early age, one that hasnt responded to medication. They wrote that Farak attempted suicide in high school and was also hospitalized while in college. She couldn't be sure which cases these were, Dookhan told investigators. Per her own court testimony, as shown in the docu-series, Farak started working at a state drug lab in Amherst in 2004. The court also dismissed all meth cases processed at the lab since Farak started in 2004. 3.3.2023 5:30 PM, Joe Lancaster He was floored when he found the worksheets. The disgraced chemist was sentenced to less than two years behind bars in 2014, following her guilty pleas for stealing cocaine from the lab. 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.". Months after Farak pleaded guilty in January 2014, Ryan filed a
Nassif put Dookhan on desk duty but allowed her to finish testing cases already on her plate, including some of the samples she had taken from the locker. Still, the state was acquiring evidence. According to the documents released Tuesday, investigators found that Sonja Farak tested drug samples and testified in court while under the influence of methamphetamines, ketamine, cocaine, LSD . Shown results suggesting otherwise, she copped to contaminating samples "a few times" during the previous "two to three years.". 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. 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. Kaczmarek, along with former assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and John Verner, all face possible sanctions. As extensively detailed in How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Farak was arrested on January 19, 2013. To multiple courts' amazement, her incessant drug use never caught the attention of her co-workers. But why were a small handful of prosecutors allowed total control over evidence about one of the worst criminal justice failures in recent memory? Looking back, it seems that Massachusetts law enforcement officials, reeling from the Dookhan case, simply felt they couldn't weather another full-fledged forensics scandal. Her notes record on-the-job drug use ranging from small nips of the lab's baseline. It included information about the type of drugs she tampered with. 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. Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. 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. Farak started at Amherst lab in Aug 2004 p. 32. Like Hinton, the Amherst lab had no cameras. Her medical records included notes from Faraks therapist in Amherst, Anna Kogan. Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to stealing samples of drugs from an Amherst drug lab. How to Fix a Drug Scandal: With Shannon O'Neill, Karl Kenzler, Paul Solotaroff, Scott Allen. A local prosecutor also asked Ballou to look into a case Farak had tested as far back as 2005. At some point, the attorney general's office stopped chasing leads entirely. After serving for 13 months, she was released on parole in 2015. Ryan finally viewed the file in the attorney generals offices in October 2014. Regarding the cases that she had handled, the Massachusetts courts threw out every case in the Amherst lab during her tenure. When grand jury materials were eventually released to defense attorneys, then, they did not mention that these documents existed. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. We couldn't do it without you. This is merely a fishing expedition, Foster wrote in
Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015. 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. Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak. Talking Politics: Should a new government agency protect the coastline from climate change? After contemplating another suicide, she settled on drugs, and the fact that she had such easy access to it at her workplace made it easier for her to get lost in that world. The defense bar also demanded answers on how such crucial evidence stayed buried for so long. 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. In court, she added that there was "no smoking gun" in the evidence. Investigators either missed or declined opportunities to dig very deep. Inwardly though, Sonja was struggling. "The gravity of the present case cannot be overstated," Kaczmarek wrote in her memo recommending a prison sentence of five to seven years. When the Farak scandal erupted, that misconduct came into view. Scalia may as well have been describing Dookhan. Four months after Ryan found the worksheets, Judge Kinder
Over the next four years, Farak consumed nearly all of it. 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. YouTube As How to Fix a Drug Scandal explores, Farak had long struggled with her mental . Farak was getting high off the confiscated drugs police sent her way before replacing the evidence with fake drugs. She was also testifying in court while high. After high school, Sonja went on to major in biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts. Kaczmarek quoted the worksheets in a memo to her supervisor, Verner, and others, summarizing that they revealed Farak's "struggle with substance abuse." Judge Kinder ordered her to produce all potentially privileged documents for his review to determine whether they could be disclosed. The story of the intertwining Farak and Penate evidence began in January 2013, when state police arrested Farak and searched her car. To better estimate how many convictions will have to be reviewed because of Farak, the Supreme Judicial Court
Her wrongdoings were exposed when unsealed cocaine and a crack pipe were found under her desk. 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. Chemist Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to "tampering with evidence" back in 2014 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. But whether anyone investigated her conduct during a brief stint working at the state's Boston drug lab is at . 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. It's been like this forever, or at least since girlhood. 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. 1. When defense lawyers asked to see evidence for themselves, state prosecutors smeared them as pursuing a "fishing expedition.". "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. This article originally appeared in print under the headline "The Chemists and the Cover-Up". The governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. 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. 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. 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. Follow us so you don't miss a thing! 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. Inwardly though, Sonja Farak was striving. The report
She was trying to suppress mental health issues, depression in specific, and she attempted to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. 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. wrote to the Attorney Generals Office two days later. The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the Amherst crime . 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. "It was almost like Dookhan wanted to get caught," one of her former co-workers told state police in 2012. "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. another filing. With your support, GBH will continue to innovate, inspire and connect through reporting you value that meets todays moments. Among other items, Kaczmarek
High Massachusetts Lab Chemist Causes Thousands Of Drug Cases To Be Dismissed. The staff in the new lab was also doubled, and the number of trainees was also increased. Yet Dookhan's brazen crimes went undetected for ages. He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. A judge sentenced Dookhan to three years in prison; she was granted parole in April 2016. Coakley assigned the case against Dookhan to Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek and her supervisor, John Verner. "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. The criminal prosecution wasn't the only investigation of the Dookhan scandal. Between 2005 and 2013, Sonja Farak was performing laboratory tests at a state drug lab in Amherst while under the influence of narcotics. 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. May 2003 started working in Hinton drug lab p. 14. Each employee had a unique swipe card, but Farak simply used a physical key to get in after hours and on weekends. Dookhan had seeded public mistrust in the criminal justice system, which "now becomes an issue in every criminal trial for every defendant.". 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. | Sgt. "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. 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 Kaczmarek herself later observed, Farak essentially had "a drugstore at her disposal" from her first day at the Amherst lab. 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. But when the relevant police reports were released to defense attorneys, there was no mention of the diary entries' existence, much less that they went back so far. "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents," Ryan wrote to the attorney general's office. Former chemist Annie Dookhan was convicted in 2013 on charges of improperly testing drug evidence at a drug lab in Boston. His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. Get all the latest from Sanditon on GBH Passport, How one Brookline studio helps artists with disabilities thrive. She started seeing a substance abuse therapist around this time. Foster's first stepper ethical obligations and office protocolshould have been to look through the evidence to see what had already been handed over. Kaczmarek was now juggling two scandals on opposite sides of the state. They never searched Farak's computer or her home. The attorney general's representative at these hearings was Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster, a recent hire. 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. El 6 de enero de 2014, Farak se declar culpable de los cargos en su contra. How to Fix a Drug Scandal is an American true crime documentary miniseries that was released on Netflix on April 1, 2020. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. email highlighted in the Velis-Merrigan report. Because of all that, it's no surprise that Farak was sent to prison in Massachusetts. Kaczmarek had obtained the evidence at issue while she was prosecuting Farak on state charges of tampering with evidence and drug possession. Name. 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.". Officials recognized the worksheets for what they were: near-indisputable confessions. He also
Farak was arrested the next day, and the attorney general's office assigned the case to Anne Kaczmarek. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. With the Dookhan case so fresh, reporters immediately labeled Farak "the second chemist. She had unrestricted access to the evidence room. shipped nearly 300 pages of previously undisclosed materials to local prosecutors around the state. Read More: Where is Sonja Farak Sister Now? And so, when she pleaded guilty in January 2014, Farak got what one attorney called "de facto immunity." Fortunately, the courts largely ignored this shallow investigation. There is nothing to indicate that the allegations against Farak date back to the time she tested the drugs in Penates case. Since then, she has kept a low profile. 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. 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." The last contact information provided by her, in response to Penates allegations, placed her residence in Hatfield, Massachusetts. Foster consulted Kaczmarek about the files contents, according to an
As the state's top court put it, the criminal investigation into Farak was "cursory at best.". In the series, it's explained that Farak loved the energy the meth gave her. Her access to evidence was not restricted, and she continued testifying in court. She said, It was about coping; it certainly wasnt about having fun; I dont think shes had fun in quite a while.. A scandal erupts, raising questions for the thousands of defendants in her cases. After she was caught, Farak pleaded guilty to stealing drugs from the lab and was sentenced to prison time of 18 months. Farak was released from prison in 2015 and has kept a low profile since. Farak signed
From the April 2023 issue, Billy Binion Damning evidence reveals drug lab chemist Sonja Farak's addictions. In the aftermath, the court felt it necessary to make clear that "no prosecutorhas the authority to decline to disclose exculpatory information.". Between the two women, 47,000 drug convictions and guilty pleas have been dismissed in the last two years, many for misdemeanor possession. 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. Disgraced drug lab chemist Sonja Farak emerges as her own attorney as defendant in $5.7 million federal lawsuit. She received an email from a detective weeks after Farak's arrest containing detailed notes Farak made in conjunction with her own drug treatment, pointedly identified as "FARAK Admissions" but failed to disclose them for years. 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. Our streamlined software is accessible wherever and whenever you . 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. 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. If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. The hotline is open Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. A Powerful EHR to Manage a Thriving Practice. Over time, Farak's drug use turned to cocaine, LSD and, eventually, crack. 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.". She had never quashed a subpoena before, but supervisors told her to fend off motions about Farak. Farak struggled with mental health throughout her life, the documentary series explains. Cleverly omitting pronouns, she wrote that "after reviewing" the file, "every documenthas been disclosed." The surveillance of the chemists as well as the standards and the confiscated drugs has also been increased considerably. During the next four years, she would periodically sober up and then relapse. A hearing on their motions is scheduled next month. Since her release, she has kept a low profile and managed to stay out of the public . Coakley did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. 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. She recovered, made it through college and got a job as a chemist at the Amherst Crime Lab, where she tested confiscated drugs. The judge ordered prosecutors and defense attorneys to coordinate on identifying undisclosed emails related to documents seized from the disgraced state crime lab chemist. 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. The number is 888-999-2881. It declined Farak's offer of a detailed confession in exchange for leniency, nixing the offer without even negotiating terms. "These drugswere tested fairly," Coakley claimed the day after Farak's arrest. Defense attorneys had. ", Prosecutors nationwide pretty uniformly backed this argument, which the Supreme Court rejected in a 54 opinion. 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. Two weeks after Ryans discovery, the Attorney Generals Office
And yet, due to their actions, they did injure people and they did inflict a lot of pain, not just on a couple of people, but on thousands. "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." She was sentenced to 18 months in jail plus five years of probation. The newest true crime series from Netflix, How to Fix a Drug Scandal, was released on April 1, 2020. 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 December 2011, after police in Springfield, Mass., had arrested Renaldo Penate for allegedly selling heroin, the drugs from that case were tested at a state drug lab by technician Sonja Farak. After graduating from Portsmouth High School, Farak attended the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she got a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry in 2000. The lead prosecutor on Farak's case knew about the diaries, as did supervisors at the state attorney general's office. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. 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. The actions of Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan caused a racket of such a scale that the state had to recompense for it with millions of dollars and had to make a historic move in the dismissal of wrongful convictions. 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 next month, Ryan asked again. 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. But a crucial issue was not before the court. Foster, now general counsel at the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission, and Kaczmarek, now a clerk magistrate in Suffolk Superior Court, declined to comment for this story. Two detectives found Farak at a courthouse waiting to testify on an unrelated matter. At the time of Penates trial, the state Attorney Generals Office contended Faraks misdeeds dated back only as far as 2012. The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years.