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. Shawn Musgrave 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. 1. His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the Amherst crime . On top of that, it was also ensured that no analyst would ever work without supervision. The medical records stated that she did not have an existing drug problem that was amplified by her access to more substances. NORTHAMPTON Sonja J. Farak told a nurse at the Western Massachusetts Regional Women's Correctional Center in Chicopee in December 2013 that she used methamphetamines and other stimulants "whenever she could get her hands on them." And since her job as a chemist was to test drug samples at a state drug lab in Amherst, that opportunity came daily. The staff in the new lab was also doubled, and the number of trainees was also increased. His is one of what lawyers say could be thousands of convictions questioned in the wake of the Farak scandal. On paper, these numbers made Dookhan the most productive chemist at Hinton; the next most productive averaged around 300 samples per month. Sonja Farak had admitted to stealing and using drugs from the drug lab where she worked as a chemist for around 9 years. When a Therapy Session starts, the software automatically creates a To-Do list item reminding users to create the relevant documentation. Stream GBH's Award-Winning Content For Parents And Children. Who Is Sonja Farak From Netflix Docu-Series How To Fix A Drug Scandal When defense lawyers asked to see evidence for themselves, state prosecutors smeared them as pursuing a "fishing expedition.". Terms Of Use, (Annie Dookhan (left) and Sonja Farak, Associated Press). Investigators either missed or declined opportunities to dig very deep. Who Is Sonja Farak From Netflix's 'How to Fix a Drug Scandal'? | True 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. PDF United States Court of Appeals 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." 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. State prosecutors hadnt provided this evidence to other district attorneys offices contending with the Farak fallout, either. Her wrongdoings were exposed when unsealed cocaine and a crack pipe were found under her desk. As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . Perhaps, as criminal justice scandals inevitably emerge, we need to get more independent eyes on the evidence from the start. Kaczmarek, along with former assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and John Verner, all face possible sanctions. The story of the intertwining Farak and Penate evidence began in January 2013, when state police arrested Farak and searched her car. answered that the state considered the evidence irrelevant to any case other than Faraks.. Shortly into her role at Amherst, Farak decided to try liquid methamphetamine to ease her personal struggles. Despite clear indications that Farak used a variety of narcoticsher worksheets mentioned phentermine, and that vial of powdered oxycodone-acetaminophen had been found at her benchKaczmarek also proceeded as if crack cocaine were Farak's sole drug. As he leafed through three boxes of evidence, he found the substance abuse worksheets and diaries. Rollins said it covers "a period of time in which either now disgraced chemist Annie Dookhan, or another convicted chemist Sonja Farak ," worked there. Support GBH. wrote to the Attorney Generals Office two days later. "I suspect that if another entity was in the mix"perhaps the inspector general or an independent investigator"the Attorney General's Office would have treated the Farak case much more seriously and would have been much more reluctant to hide the ball," Ryan writes in an email. 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. "These drugswere tested fairly," Coakley claimed the day after Farak's arrest. As federal food benefits decline, Mass. In November 2013, Dookhan pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, and perjury. 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 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. . 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. It's been like this forever, or at least since girlhood. 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.". We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. . memo, Kaczmarek told her supervisors that "Farak's admissions on her 'emotional worksheets' recovered from her car detail her struggle with substance abuse. 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 twin Massachusetts drug lab scandals are unprecedented in the sheer number of cases thrown out because of forensic misconduct. 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. Patrick said "the most important take-home" was that "no individual's due process rights were compromised.". "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. | Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. State prosecutors gave Farak the immunity they had declined to grant two years earlier, then asked when she started analyzing samples while high. 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. 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. "I would have done it": Filmmaker on indentifying with the "How to Fix 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. Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. "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." And when defense attorneys tried to do it themselves, Coakley's office blocked their efforts. | "The gravity of the present case cannot be overstated," Kaczmarek wrote in her memo recommending a prison sentence of five to seven years. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015 Contributed by Shawn Musgrave (Musgrave Investigations) p. 1. 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. The Amherst lab had called state police when the two missing samples were noticed in 2013. 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. How to Fix a Drug Scandal (TV Mini Series 2020) - IMDb The charges against Penate were dismissed after Farak's conviction. The cocaine, found in an unsealed, completed drug-testing kit, tested negativemeaning Farak had seemingly replaced the formerly "positive" drugs with falsified substances. Local prosecutors also remained in the dark. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. "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. There is nothing to indicate that the allegations against Farak date back to the time she tested the drugs in Penates case. But in a Kaczmarek wrote back. food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. Former chemist Annie Dookhan was convicted in 2013 on charges of improperly testing drug evidence at a drug lab in Boston. Listen Live: Classic and Contemporary Celtic, Listen Live: Cape, Coast and Islands NPR Station, Boston nonprofit Street2Ivy is producing this generation's entrepreneurs. Follow us so you don't miss a thing! Foster consulted Kaczmarek about the files contents, according to an Widening scandal at state drug lab in Mass. exposes opportunities for sonja farak - masslive.com Farak was getting high off the confiscated drugs police sent her way before replacing the evidence with fake drugs. Despite her status as a free woman (who has seemingly disappeared from the public eye), Farak's wrongdoings continue to make waves in the Massachusetts courts. In January of 2013, Sonja Farak, a chemist at a state crime lab in Massachusetts, was arrested for tampering with evidence related to criminal drug cases (Small, 2020).A year later, Farak pleaded guilty to tampering with drug evidence, theft of a controlled substance, and drug possession .She received a sentence of 18 months with 5 years of probation and was released in 2015. She had been accused of intentional infliction of emotional distress in addition to the conspiracy to violate [Penates] civil rights.. Chemist was high at work for 8 years: court docs - CBS News TherapyNotes. 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? 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. Mucha gente que vio el programa se pregunta: dnde est Sonja Farak ahora? After graduating from Portsmouth High School, Farak attended the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she got a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry in 2000. Between Farak and Dookhanwho's also featured in How to Fix a Drug Scandal38,000 wrongfully convicted cases have been dismissed, according to the Washington Post. "No reasonable individual could have failed to appreciate the unlawfulness of [Kaczmarek's] actions in these circumstances," Robertson wrote in her ruling. 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.". He was floored when he found the worksheets. After serving just a year of her 18 month sentence, Farak was released from prison in 2015. 1. 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. The fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. The attorney general's officeKaczmarek or her supervisorscould have asked a judge to determine whether the worksheets were actually privileged, as Kaczmarek later acknowledged. "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.". Obviously, after a blunder of such scale, no one would want their samples checked from the same lab. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. The governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. This immediately provoked questions about the thousands of cases in which her findings had contributed to the imprisonment of an individual. Read More: Where is Sonja Farak Sister Now? How to Fix a Drug Scandal is an American true crime documentary miniseries that was released on Netflix on April 1, 2020. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. Sonja Farak exposed - full extent of her drug use and where she is now The Farak scandal came as the state grappled with another drug lab crisis. While Dookhan had tampered with evidence and indulged in dry-labbing, Farak stole from her workplace. It had no surveillance cameras, laughable security on evidence safes, and "laissez faire" management, which the state inspector general determined was the "most glaring factor that led to the Dookhan crisis. The Netflix docuseries ends by acknowledging that Farak received an 18-month sentence, and that defense attorney Luke Ryan was able . To better estimate how many convictions will have to be reviewed because of Farak, the Supreme Judicial Court 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. 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. At the time of her arrest, she had resided in 37 Laurel Park in Northampton. 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. Because she did so, Plaintiff served more than five years in a state prison.". A year later, in October 2014, prosecutors relented, granting access to the full evidence in Farak's case to attorney Luke Ryan. Where is Sonja Farak from How To Fix A Drug Scandal now? | "A forensic analyst responding to a request from a law enforcement official may feel pressureor have an incentiveto alter the evidence in a manner favorable to the prosecution.". 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. This very well could have been the end of the investigative trail but for a few stubborn defense lawyers, who appealed the ruling. Penate was convicted in December 2013 and sentenced to serve five to seven years. 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. The defense bar also demanded answers on how such crucial evidence stayed buried for so long. The information showed that Farak sought therapy for drug addiction and that her misconduct had been ongoing for years.