For people with disabilities needing assistance with the Public Files, contact Glenn Heath at 617-300-3268. 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. 3.4.2023 8:00 AM, Reason Staff Introduction. Penate is seeking a new trial, contending the conviction should be reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct and evidence tainted by Farak. another filing. Hearings could help decide how many of thousands of convictions tainted by Farak's testing may be overturned. But without access to evidence showing how long Farak had been doing this, defendants with constitutional grounds for challenging their incarceration were held for months and even years longer than necessary. The court decided to uphold a ruling dismissing charges against the defendant, a juvenile at the time of the alleged offense identified only as Washington W. The justices didnt name his prosecutor, David Omiunu, who was identified by The Eye from other court records. In worksheet notes dated Thursday, Dec. 22, Farak At the time of her arrest, she had resided in 37 Laurel Park in Northampton. 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. Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. 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. Shortly into her role at Amherst, Farak decided to try liquid methamphetamine to ease her personal struggles. memo, Kaczmarek told her supervisors that "Farak's admissions on her 'emotional worksheets' recovered from her car detail her struggle with substance abuse. 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. "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.". What Did Sonja Farak Do, Exactly? Farak received a sentence of 18 months in jail and 5 years of probation. compelled release of additional drug treatment records, which indicated Farak used a variety of drugs that she stole from the lab for 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. 3.3.2023 5:30 PM, Joe Lancaster "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. After the Supreme Court's decision, a skeptical colleague started tracking how many microscope slides Dookhan used to test samples for cocaine. She was sentenced to 18 months in jail plus five years of probation. 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. Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak. 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.". Cleverly omitting pronouns, she wrote that "after reviewing" the file, "every documenthas been disclosed." 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? Sonja Farak stole, ingested or manufactured drugs almost every day for eight years while working as a chemist at a state lab in Amherst, Massachusetts. As extensively detailed in How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Farak was arrested on January 19, 2013. 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 responsibility of the mess that she created should also rest upon the shoulders of her workplace that allowed her the opportunity to indulge so freely in drugs in the first place. Coakley assigned the case against Dookhan to Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek and her supervisor, John Verner. 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 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 medical records stated that she did not have an existing drug problem that was amplified by her access to more substances. "Because on almost a daily basis Farak abused narcoticsthere is no assurance that she was able to perform chemical analysis correctly," the judge found. 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. Penate and other defendants are asking see all of Fosters emails regarding Farak and other materials relating to the handling of evidence in the chemist's case. Fortunately, the courts largely ignored this shallow investigation. With the Dookhan case so fresh, reporters immediately labeled Farak "the second chemist. 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. When the Farak scandal erupted, that misconduct came into view. His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. 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. The Amherst lab had called state police when the two missing samples were noticed in 2013. Process Notes/Psychotherapy Notes Process notes are sometimes also referred to as psychotherapy notesthey're the notes you take during or after a session. She was struggling to suppress mental health issues, depression in particular, and she tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. 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. But in a Accessibility | Farak is amongst one of the 18 defendants battling the lawsuit filed by Rolando Penate. Compromised drug samples often fit the definition. mentioned a New England Patriots game on Saturday, Dec. 24 which corresponded with a game date in 2011. Penate argued the court should follow those findings. In the aftermath, the court felt it necessary to make clear that "no prosecutorhas the authority to decline to disclose exculpatory information.". One of the reasons for the decrepit state and standard of the Amherst lab was the lack of funds. "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. 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." May 2003 started working in Hinton drug lab p. 14. Carr weaves Farak's story into that of another Massachusetts chemist, Annie Dookhan, who worked across the state at the Hinton drug lab in Boston. The charges against Penate were dismissed after Farak's conviction. 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.". "It was almost like Dookhan wanted to get caught," one of her former co-workers told state police in 2012. answered that the state considered the evidence irrelevant to any case other than Faraks.. At some point, the attorney general's office stopped chasing leads entirely. Since her release, she has kept a low profile and managed to stay out of the public . 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. Farak admitted in testimony that she began using drugs almost as soon as she started working at the Massachusetts State Crime Lab in Amherst. 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. Its unclear if Farak is still with Lee, as they have both remained out of the public eye since the case. (Featured Image Credit: Mass Live). 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! If Farak found a substance was a true drug, the person it was confiscated from could be convicted of a substance-related crime. 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. He didn't buy her quibbling that there's a difference between an explicit lie and obfuscation by grammar. Coakley did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. 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. In addition to ordering the dismissal of many thousands of cases, the Supreme Judicial Court directed a committee to draft a "checklist" for prosecutors, clarifying their obligation to turn over evidence to defendants. The report You can check your records electronically by following this link: https://icori.chs.state.ma.us. Even the master's degree on her rsum was fabricated. 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. Both have since left the attorney general's office for other government positions. 1. Having barely investigated her, prosecutors indicted Farak only for the samples in her possession the day she was caught. The fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. There is no allegation of misconduct against the local prosecutors who presented the case against Penate in Hampden County Superior Court. When Farak was arrested,former Attorney General Martha Coakley told the public investigators believed Farak tampered with drugs at the lab for only a few months. 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 . 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. Thus, only defendants whose evidence she tested in the six-month window before her arrest could challenge their cases. 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. Like Hinton, the Amherst lab had no cameras. From 2004 to 2013, Farak took advantage of . 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. 1. 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. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, Sonja Farak is the subject of Netflix's "How To Fix a Drug Scandal. Ryan then filed a Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. They were found with their packaging sliced open and their contents apparently altered. 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. He also Per her own court testimony, as shown in the docu-series, Farak started working at a state drug lab in Amherst in 2004. Kaczmarek had obtained the evidence at issue while she was prosecuting Farak on state charges of tampering with evidence and drug possession. 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. But she worried they might be privileged as health information. You can try, Suspensions and a reprimand proposed for prosecutors admonished in drug lab scandal. Her notes record on-the-job drug use ranging from small nips of the lab's baseline. Sonja Farak in How to Fix a Drug Scandal. On paper, these numbers made Dookhan the most productive chemist at Hinton; the next most productive averaged around 300 samples per month. While Dookhan had tampered with evidence and indulged in dry-labbing, Farak stole from her workplace. Both scandals undercut confidence in the criminal justice system and the validity of forensic analysis. 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. wrote she "tried to resist using @ work, but ended up failing." Soon after Dookhan's arrest, Coakley's office asked the governor to order a broader independent probe of the Hinton lab. Farak admitted to being on a list of drugs while working between 2004 and her 2013 arrest. After weeks of hearings, a "special hearing officer" selected by the board recommended potential sanctions against them all. As he leafed through three boxes of evidence, he found the substance abuse worksheets and diaries. 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. They never searched Farak's computer or her home. 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. Scalia may as well have been describing Dookhan. Kaczmarek wrote back. In 2019, the chemist was spotted at federal court in Springfield, MA , attending a civil case. noted the mental health worksheets found in Faraks car, which had not been released. . Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015 Contributed by Shawn Musgrave (Musgrave Investigations) p. 1. Many more are likely to follow, with the total expected to exceed 50,000. As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. She started seeing a substance abuse therapist around this time. To multiple courts' amazement, her incessant drug use never caught the attention of her co-workers. 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. As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . 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. Shown results suggesting otherwise, she copped to contaminating samples "a few times" during the previous "two to three years.". ", In 2004, her first full year at the lab, Dookhan reported analyzing approximately 700 samples per month. Another three days later, state police conducted a full search of Farak's workstation, finding a vial of powder that tested positive for oxycodone, plus 11.7 grams of cocaine in a desk drawer. It was. During her trial, her defense lawyer Elaine Pourinski said that Farak wasnt taking drugs to party, but instead to control her depression. 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. If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. 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. motion with Hampden Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Kinder to see the evidence for himself. When defense lawyers asked to see evidence for themselves, state prosecutors smeared them as pursuing a "fishing expedition.". Yet 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. Her answer: more than eight years before her arrest. 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. Democratic Gov. Without even interviewing Foster, they determined there was "no evidence" of obstruction of justice by her, by Kaczmarek, or by any state prosecutor. Fue arrestada el 19 de enero de 2013. Because state prosecutors hid Farak's substance abuse diaries, it took far too long for the full timeline of her crimes to become public. 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 Netflix docuseries ends by acknowledging that Farak received an 18-month sentence, and that defense attorney Luke Ryan was able . Farak struggled with mental health throughout her life, the documentary series explains. 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.". Regarding the cases that she had handled, the Massachusetts courts threw out every case in the Amherst lab during her tenure. At least 11,000 cases have already been dismissed due to fallout from the scandal, with thousands more likely to come. Farak worked under the influence of drugs for nine years - from 2004 to 2013 - before she was caught. 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. "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. ", Prosecutors maintained that Faraks rogue behavior spanned just a few months. Follow us so you don't miss a thing! Support GBH. "As the gatekeeper to this evidence, she failed to turn over documents, and she adamantly opposed the requests for access. She was ar-rested for tampering with evidence while abusing narcotics at work. (Netflix) A former state chemist, Sonja Farak, made headlines in 2013 when she was arrested for stealing and using drugs from a laboratory. GBH News brings you the stories, local voices, and big ideas that shape our world. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. "Going to use phentermine," she wrote on another, "but when I went to take it, I saw how little (v. little) there is left = ended up not using. Sonja Farak was a chemist at a state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 2005 to 2013. They wrote that Lee, disabled by a stew of mental ailments, [spent] her hours surfing the Web in a haze.. Gov. . 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 . 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. The twin Massachusetts drug lab scandals are unprecedented in the sheer number of cases thrown out because of forensic misconduct. Coakley's office finally launched a criminal investigation in July 2012, more than a year after the infraction was discovered by Dookhan's supervisors. 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. In "How to Fix a Drug Scandal," a new four-part Netflix docuseries, documentary filmmaker Erin Lee Carr presents the stories of Massachusetts drug lab chemists Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak, and . ", Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. At this point, Farakunlike Dookhandidn't admit anything. Verner, who testified that he didn't "micromanage" Kaczmarek, escaped criticism. Investigators gave that information to Kaczmarek and the state AG's office,according tohearings before thestate board that disciplines attorneys. Chemist Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to "tampering with evidence" back in 2014 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. In her June 17 ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Katherine Robertson dismissed former Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek's claims of qualified immunity a doctrine that gives legal immunity to some public officials accused of misconduct. 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. Kaczmarek was now juggling two scandals on opposite sides of the state. 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." After serving just a year of her 18 month sentence, Farak was released from prison in 2015. Farak was getting high off the confiscated drugs police sent her way before replacing the evidence with fake drugs. Kaczmarek quoted the worksheets in a memo to her supervisor, Verner, and others, summarizing that they revealed Farak's "struggle with substance abuse." State prosecutors gave Farak the immunity they had declined to grant two years earlier, then asked when she started analyzing samples while high. Stream GBH's Award-Winning Content For Parents And Children. Its no big deal, 14-year-old Farak said to the Panama City News Herald. In fall 2013, a Springfield, Massachusetts, judge convened hearings with the explicit aim of establishing "the timing and scope" of Farak's "alleged criminal conduct.". Powered by WordPress.com VIP. 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.". 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. | To better estimate how many convictions will have to be reviewed because of Farak, the Supreme Judicial Court Instead, Kaczmarek proceeded as if the substance abuse was a recent development. 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. Without access to the diaries, the Springfield judge in 2013 found that Farak had starting stealing from samples in summer 2012. In a letter filed with the Supreme Court, Julianne Nassif, a lab supervisor, wrote that Hinton had "appropriate quality control" measures. The lead prosecutor on Farak's case knew about the diaries, as did supervisors at the state attorney general's office. Talking Politics: Should a new government agency protect the coastline from climate change? She grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. Exhausted from the ongoing scandal in Boston, state officials were desperate for damage control. (Conveniently, they also found a Patriots schedule from 2011 in the car.). Farak worked for the Amherst Drug Lab in Massachusetts for 9 years when she was convicted of stealing and using them. Shawn Musgrave is a reporter who was until recently based in Boston. Because of all that, it's no surprise that Farak was sent to prison in Massachusetts. Former chemist Annie Dookhan was convicted in 2013 on charges of improperly testing drug evidence at a drug lab in Boston. Another worksheet had the month and weekdays for December 2011, which police easily could have determined by cross-referencing holidays or looking up a New England Patriots game mentioned in one entry. The Farak scandal came as the state grappled with another drug lab crisis.

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