With the lab's ample drug supply, she was able to sneak the drug each day from a jug that resided in the shared workspace. In January 2014, she pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and drug possession. Before her sentencing, Farak failed a drug test while out on bail, according to Mass Live. The Attorney Generals Office, Velis and Merrigan and the state police declined to answer questions about the handling of the Farak evidence. 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. A year later, in October 2014, prosecutors relented, granting access to the full evidence in Farak's case to attorney Luke Ryan. 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 . And so, when she pleaded guilty in January 2014, Farak got what one attorney called "de facto immunity." Join us. Fue arrestada el 19 de enero de 2013. "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.". The report She started seeing a substance abuse therapist around this time. Sonja Farak. 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. 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. 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. (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. Introduction. She was ar-rested for tampering with evidence while abusing narcotics at work. Nassif considered it a lapse in judgment, but not a disqualifying one; Nassif's boss didn't think it necessary to alert the prosecutors whose cases relied on the samples, much less the defendants. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the Amherst lab in 2004. 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. It's not as bad as Dookhan, they asserted and implied over and over. 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.. motion on behalf of another client to see the evidence. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, Sonja Farak is the subject of Netflix's "How To Fix a Drug Scandal. Joseph . Verner, who testified that he didn't "micromanage" Kaczmarek, escaped criticism. Though. 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 . The charges against Penate were dismissed after Farak's conviction. | In Farak's car, police found a "works kit"crack cocaine, a spatula, and copper mesh, often used as a pipe filter. Farak trabaj en el laboratorio Amherst desde el verano de 2004 y poco despus comenz a tomar las drogas del laboratorio. 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. Powered by. How to Fix a Drug Scandal: With Shannon O'Neill, Karl Kenzler, Paul Solotaroff, Scott Allen. His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. 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. concluded there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or obstruction of justice in matters related to the Farak case. There is no allegation of misconduct against the local prosecutors who presented the case against Penate in Hampden County Superior Court. 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. May 2003 started working in Hinton drug lab p. 14. Farak struggled with mental health throughout her life, the documentary series explains. His report deemed Dookhan the "sole bad actor" at the lab, a finding that remains disputed in some circles. Cleverly omitting pronouns, she wrote that "after reviewing" the file, "every documenthas been disclosed." Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. The new numbers appear in a report issued by a court-designated "Special Master." 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. Exhausted from the ongoing scandal in Boston, state officials were desperate for damage control. The medical records stated that she did not have an existing drug problem that was amplified by her access to more substances. In 2009, Farak branched out to the lab's amphetamine, phentermine, and cocaine standards. Since the takeover, the budget for all forensic labs across the state has been increased, by around twenty-five per cent. 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. Sonja Farak is at the center of Netflix's new true crime docuseries, How To Fix a Drug Scandal. 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. Regarding the cases that she had handled, the Massachusetts courts threw out every case in the Amherst lab during her tenure. Instead, she submitted an intentionally vague letter to the judge claiming defense attorneys already had everything. 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. At the time of Penates trial, the state Attorney Generals Office contended Faraks misdeeds dated back only as far as 2012. The lone dissenting justice called the decision "too little and too late" and argued that the severity of the scandal required tossing all the cases. They were found with their packaging sliced open and their contents apparently altered. 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. 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. Because she did so, Plaintiff served more than five years in a state prison.". As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. 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. On the surface, their crimes dont seem as injurious and they dont seem to enjoy inflicting pain on others. Disgraced drug lab chemist Sonja Farak emerges as her own attorney as defendant in $5.7 million federal lawsuit. He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." 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. The attorney general's representative at these hearings was Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster, a recent hire. We couldn't do it without you. 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. ", Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. 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." ", Prosecutors maintained that Faraks rogue behavior spanned just a few months. 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. As the state's top court put it, the criminal investigation into Farak was "cursory at best.". 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. "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. Many more are likely to follow, with the total expected to exceed 50,000. 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. 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. Her role was to test for the presence of illegal substances, which could be instrumental in thousands of . Prosecutors have an obligation to give the defense exculpatory evidence including anything that could weaken evidence against defendants. The Farak scandal came as the state grappled with another drug lab crisis. This threw every sample she had ever tested into question. The special hearing officer found Kaczmarek "displayed no remorse" and was "not candid" during the disciplinary proceedings. 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. The hotline is open Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. But unlike with Dookhan, no one launched a bigger investigation of Farak. One was clearly dated November 16, 2011a year and two months before her arrest. El 6 de enero de 2014, Farak se declar culpable de los cargos en su contra. Patrick said "the most important take-home" was that "no individual's due process rights were compromised.". She was released in 2015, as reported by Mass Live. In the aftermath, the court felt it necessary to make clear that "no prosecutorhas the authority to decline to disclose exculpatory information.". You can try, Suspensions and a reprimand proposed for prosecutors admonished in drug lab scandal. If Farak found a substance was a true drug, the person it was confiscated from could be convicted of a substance-related crime. Kaczmarek quoted the worksheets in a memo to her supervisor, Verner, and others, summarizing that they revealed Farak's "struggle with substance abuse." Who is Sonja Farak, the former state drug lab chemist featured in the show? 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. Episode 2. food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. Both scandals undercut confidence in the criminal justice system and the validity of forensic analysis. Meier put the number at 40,323 defendants, though some have called that an overestimate. 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. Having barely investigated her, prosecutors indicted Farak only for the samples in her possession the day she was caught. In worksheet notes dated Thursday, Dec. 22, Farak In a March 2013 Stream GBH's Award-Winning Content For Parents And Children. "The gravity of the present case cannot be overstated," Kaczmarek wrote in her memo recommending a prison sentence of five to seven years. High Massachusetts Lab Chemist Causes Thousands Of Drug Cases To Be Dismissed. A scandal erupts, raising questions for the thousands of defendants in her cases. Defense attorneys had. 3.3.2023 5:30 PM, Joe Lancaster They tend to be more freeform notes about the session and your impressions of the client's statements and demeanour. The lawsuit names Kaczmarek, Farak and three members of the state police. 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. February 2013 email, to which he attached the worksheets. She soon crossed all these lines. Democratic Gov. 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 Foster's first stepper ethical obligations and office protocolshould have been to look through the evidence to see what had already been handed over. Most important, they found seven worksheets from Farak's substance abuse therapy. Farak is amongst one of the 18 defendants battling the lawsuit filed by Rolando Penate. The governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. "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. Between 2005 and 2013, Sonja Farak was performing laboratory tests at a state drug lab in Amherst while under the influence of narcotics. Sonja Farak, who worked as a chemist at the Amherst drug lab since 2004, was arrested in January 2013 after one of her co-workers noticed samples were missing from evidence. One colleague called her the "super woman of the lab. 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. 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 Netflix docuseries ends by acknowledging that Farak received an 18-month sentence, and that defense attorney Luke Ryan was able . 1. She said, It was about coping; it certainly wasnt about having fun; I dont think shes had fun in quite a while.. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. Two Massachusetts drug lab technicians Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan were caught tainting evidence in separate drug labs in different but equally shocking ways. At some point, the attorney general's office stopped chasing leads entirely. TherapyNotes. memo, Kaczmarek told her supervisors that "Farak's admissions on her 'emotional worksheets' recovered from her car detail her struggle with substance abuse. After graduating from Portsmouth High School, Farak attended the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she got a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry in 2000. 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. Rollins said it covers "a period of time in which either now disgraced chemist Annie Dookhan, or another convicted chemist Sonja Farak ," worked there. 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. 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." How to Fix a Drug Scandal is an American true crime documentary miniseries that was released on Netflix on April 1, 2020. 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.". Shawn Musgrave is a reporter who was until recently based in Boston. answered that the state considered the evidence irrelevant to any case other than Faraks.. another filing. Not only did they not turn these documents over, but I wasnt aware that they existed, said Frank Flannery, who was the Hampden County assistant district attorney assigned to appeals following Faraks arrest. As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. Sonja Farak is in the grip of a rubbed-raw depression that hasn't responded to medication. Earlier that day, a chemist at the Amherst drug lab had tracked two samples that were missing from the evidence locker to Sonja Farak's bench. Her answer: more than eight years before her arrest. Would love your thoughts, please comment. After serving for 13 months, she was released on parole in 2015. The fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. Maybe fatigue made them sloppy, or perhaps they actively chose to look the other way as evidence piled up about the enormity of Farak's crimes. Tens of thousands of criminal drug cases were dismissed as a result of misconduct by Dookhan and Farak. 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 . 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. From the April 2023 issue, Billy Binion In a separate opinion in October 2018, the Supreme Judicial Court also ordered the state to return most court fines and probation fees to people whose cases were dismissed; one estimate puts that price tag at $10 million. 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. When grand jury materials were eventually released to defense attorneys, then, they did not mention that these documents existed. Dookhan had seeded public mistrust in the criminal justice system, which "now becomes an issue in every criminal trial for every defendant.". Her ar-rest led to the dismissal of thousands of drug cases in Massachusetts. She was sentenced to 18 months in jail plus five years of probation. 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. Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. Farak apparently still tested each caseunlike Annie Dookhan, another Massachusetts chemist who was arrested five months prior to Farak for fabricating test results. "If she were suffering from back injurymaybe she took some oxys?" Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal Story: 5 Fast Facts. 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. Scalia may as well have been describing Dookhan. Martha Coakley, then attorney general for the state, argued in Melendez-Diaz that a chemist's certificate contains only "neutral, objective facts." In a 61 ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court in 2017, the defense bar, led by public defenders and the Massachusetts branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), won the dismissal of almost every conviction based on Dookhan's analysismore than 36,000 cases in all. She later called this dismissive exchange a "plea to God.". "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." Thank you! The former judges and the state police officers who helped them conducted a thorough review, said Emalie Gainey, spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey. 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. Her medical records included notes from Faraks therapist in Amherst, Anna Kogan. ", The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. Accessibility | After high school, Sonja went on to major in biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts. 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. Foster and another assistant attorney general assented to that motion. But a crucial issue was not before the court. Or she just lied about her results altogether: In one of the more ludicrous cases, she testified under oath that a chunk of cashew was crack cocaine. They never searched Farak's computer or her home. The Farak documents indicate she used drugs on the very day she certified samples as heroin in Penates case. In 2019, she was seen leaving the Springfield Federal Court but declined to comment on the status of the case. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. "Whether law enforcement officials overlooked these papers or intentionally suppressed them is a question for another day.". At the time of her arrest, she had resided in 37 Laurel Park in Northampton. At the very least, we expected that we would get everything they collected in their case against Farak. Flannery, now in private practice, said the substance abuse worksheets are clearly relevant to defendants challenging Faraks analysis. 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 . 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.". Kaczmarek wrote back. Over time, Farak's drug use turned to cocaine, LSD and, eventually, crack. Follow us so you don't miss a thing! Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility at GBH, Transparency in Coverage Cost-Sharing Disclosures.