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Farak received a sentence of 18 months in jail and 5 years of probation. 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. That motion was denied, and the notice letters will explain Farak's tampering without any mention of prosecutorial misconduct. T he day Sonja Farak's world unraveled - the day a crack pipe and sliced evidence bags of cocaine were found at her workstation - started like many others: she attended court. Like Hinton, the Amherst lab had no cameras. 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. Follow us so you don't miss a thing! 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. Her role was to test for the presence of illegal substances, which could be instrumental in thousands of . 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. The attorney general's representative at these hearings was Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster, a recent hire. ", In 2004, her first full year at the lab, Dookhan reported analyzing approximately 700 samples per month. Several defense attorneys who called for the Velis-Merrigan investigation say the former judges and their state police investigators got it wrong. 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.". As he leafed through three boxes of evidence, he found the substance abuse worksheets and diaries. | I felt euphoric, Kogan wrote of Farak. The Farak documents indicate she used drugs on the very day she certified samples as heroin in Penates case. 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. Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal Story: 5 Fast Facts. Given the account that Farak was a law-abiding citizen, it is questioned as to how an Two Massachusetts drug lab technicians Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan were caught tainting evidence in separate drug labs in different but equally shocking ways. In June 2011, Dookhan secretly took 90 samples out of an evidence locker and then forged a co-worker's initials to check them back in, a clear chain-of-custody breach. They were found with their packaging sliced open and their contents apparently altered. He recommended she lose her law license for two years; the Office of Bar Counsel later argued Kaczmarek should be disbarred. She later called this dismissive exchange a "plea to God.". It was an astoundingly light touch for the second state chemist arrested in six months. She was trying to suppress mental health issues, depression in specific, and she attempted to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. As extensively detailed in How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Farak was arrested on January 19, 2013. Her medical records included notes from Faraks therapist in Amherst, Anna Kogan. 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. Netflix's latest true-crime series, How to Fix a Drug Scandal, dives deep into a shocking Massachusetts scandal, one that started in the humble confines of an underfunded drug testing lab and ended with an entire system in question. For years, Sonja Farak was addicted to cocaine, methamphetamine, and amphetamines, the kind of drugs usually bought from street dealers in covert transactions that carry the constant risk of arrest. 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. In the only quasi-independent probe of the Farak scandal ever ordered, Attorney General Healey and a district attorney appointed two retired judges to investigate in summer 2015. Sonja Farak was a chemist for a state crime lab in Massachusetts. Sonja Farak in How to Fix a Drug Scandal. The cocaine, found in an unsealed, completed drug-testing kit, tested negativemeaning Farak had seemingly replaced the formerly "positive" drugs with falsified substances. And when defense attorneys tried to do it themselves, Coakley's office blocked their efforts. 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. Farak worked for the Amherst Drug Lab in Massachusetts for 9 years when she was convicted of stealing and using them. Meier put the number at 40,323 defendants, though some have called that an overestimate. The hotline is open Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. 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. She was also under the influence when she took the stand during her trial. To better estimate how many convictions will have to be reviewed because of Farak, the Supreme Judicial Court 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 defense bar also demanded answers on how such crucial evidence stayed buried for so long. Below is an outline of her charges. Ryan finally viewed the file in the attorney generals offices in October 2014. She was arrested in 2013 when the supervisor at the Amherst lab was made aware that two samples were missing. She recovered, made it through college and got a job as a chemist at the Amherst Crime Lab, where she tested confiscated drugs. Gioia called for evidentiary hearings so prosecutors can be asked about what they knew, when they knew it, and what they did with their knowledge., Luke Ryan, Penates trial lawyer, said that the state police officers working on the report failed to obtain an appropriate understanding of the events that transpired before they were assigned to this investigation.". The Attorney Generals Office, Velis and Merrigan and the state police declined to answer questions about the handling of the Farak evidence. 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. Foster protested that portions of the evidentiary file in question might be privileged or not subject to disclosure. This is the story of Farak's drug-induced wrongdoings, and it's the story of the Massachusetts Attorney General's office apparently turning a blind eye on those wrongfully convicted because of Farak's mistakes. She said, It was about coping; it certainly wasnt about having fun; I dont think shes had fun in quite a while.. Defense attorneys had. 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. He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." "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. Accessibility | Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. There is nothing to indicate that the allegations against Farak date back to the time she tested the drugs in Penates case. She is not active on any social media platform and has kept her distance from the press. motion on behalf of another client to see the evidence. 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. A scandal erupts, raising questions for the thousands of defendants in her cases. She first worked at the Hinton State Laboratory in Jamaica Plain for a year as a bacteriologist working on HIV tests before she transferred to the Amherst Lab for drug analysis. another filing. Ryan then filed a 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. Penate is seeking a new trial, contending the conviction should be reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct and evidence tainted by Farak. "Whether law enforcement officials overlooked these papers or intentionally suppressed them is a question for another day.". Between the two women, 47,000 drug convictions and guilty pleas have been dismissed in the last two years, many for misdemeanor possession. That settlement awaits approval by a judge. The premise revolves around documentary filmmaker Erin Lee Carr following the effects of crime drug lab chemists Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan and their tampering with evidence and its aftereffects.. Dookhan was accused of forging reports and tampering with samples to . Farak was arrested the next day, and the attorney general's office assigned the case to Anne Kaczmarek. Faraks notes also wrote she "tried to resist using @ work, but ended up failing." Kaczmarek had obtained the evidence at issue while she was prosecuting Farak on state charges of tampering with evidence and drug possession. Hearings could help decide how many of thousands of convictions tainted by Farak's testing may be overturned. 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. 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.. ", Prosecutors nationwide pretty uniformly backed this argument, which the Supreme Court rejected in a 54 opinion. Perhaps, as criminal justice scandals inevitably emerge, we need to get more independent eyes on the evidence from the start. Obviously, after a blunder of such scale, no one would want their samples checked from the same lab. "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. Thus, only defendants whose evidence she tested in the six-month window before her arrest could challenge their cases. A. Powered by. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. 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. This not only led to people getting a reprieve from prison but also filing their own lawsuits against the injustice they had to suffer. Though. 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. She soon crossed all these lines. 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. 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. High Massachusetts Lab Chemist Causes Thousands Of Drug Cases To Be Dismissed. The lead prosecutor on Farak's case knew about the diaries, as did supervisors at the state attorney general's office. Since the takeover, the budget for all forensic labs across the state has been increased, by around twenty-five per cent. Among other items, Kaczmarek 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. 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. Why did she do that and where has it left her? 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. 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.". 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. READ NEXT: Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal Story: 5 Fast Facts, Sonja Farak: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know, Please review our privacy policy here: https://heavy.com/privacy-policy/, Copyright 2023 Heavy, Inc. All rights reserved. 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 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." wrote to the Attorney Generals Office two days later. Tens of thousands of criminal drug cases were dismissed as a result of misconduct by Dookhan and Farak. memo, Kaczmarek told her supervisors that "Farak's admissions on her 'emotional worksheets' recovered from her car detail her struggle with substance abuse. This might not have mattered as much if the investigators had followed the evidence that Farak had been using drugs for at least a year and almost certainly longer. They wrote that Lee, disabled by a stew of mental ailments, [spent] her hours surfing the Web in a haze.. 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. The disgraced chemist was sentenced to less than two years behind bars in 2014, following her guilty pleas for stealing cocaine from the lab. 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. 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. In worksheet notes dated Thursday, Dec. 22, Farak 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. But Ryan, who represented Penate, suspected it was more extensive. 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. Privacy Policy | ", Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. Dookhan had seeded public mistrust in the criminal justice system, which "now becomes an issue in every criminal trial for every defendant.". 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. It's not as bad as Dookhan, they asserted and implied over and over. (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. 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! The lawsuit names Kaczmarek, Farak and three members of the state police. Stream GBH's Award-Winning Content For Parents And Children. His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. The next month, Ryan asked again. Foster and another assistant attorney general assented to that motion. Kaczmarek quoted the worksheets in a memo to her supervisor, Verner, and others, summarizing that they revealed Farak's "struggle with substance abuse." She had been accused of intentional infliction of emotional distress in addition to the conspiracy to violate [Penates] civil rights.. And when the tests she did run came back negative, Dookhan added controlled substances to the vials. "he didn't request a warrant. 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. She tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. 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. But in a Shortly into her role at Amherst, Farak decided to try liquid methamphetamine to ease her personal struggles. She stopped the interview when asked about crack pipes found at her bench, and state police towed her car back to barracks while they waited on a warrant. 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. mentioned a New England Patriots game on Saturday, Dec. 24 which corresponded with a game date in 2011. Foster said that Kaczmarek told her all relevant evidence had been turned over and that her supervisor told her to write the letter, though both denied these claims. The special hearing officer found Kaczmarek "displayed no remorse" and was "not candid" during the disciplinary proceedings. Farak was released from prison in 2015 and has kept a low profile since. Netflix released a new docu-series called "How to Fix a Drug Scandal." Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. Over the next four years, Farak consumed nearly all of it. 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. Instead, Kaczmarek proceeded as if the substance abuse was a recent development. | If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. Introduction. Name. She's no longer in prison, as Farak has served her sentence. The last contact information provided by her, in response to Penates allegations, placed her residence in Hatfield, Massachusetts. He didn't buy her quibbling that there's a difference between an explicit lie and obfuscation by grammar. Her answer: more than eight years before her arrest. In 2019, she was seen leaving the Springfield Federal Court but declined to comment on the status of the case. There is no allegation of misconduct against the local prosecutors who presented the case against Penate in Hampden County Superior Court. 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. . 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 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 . The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight 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. Joseph Ballou, lead investigator for the state police, called them the most important documents from the car. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015 Contributed by Shawn Musgrave (Musgrave Investigations) p. 1. Gainey added that Healey is pleased with their conclusion that prosecutors and the state police acted appropriately. After her arrest, she received support from her parents, who showed up to her court appearances, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported. 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. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the Amherst lab in 2004. Farak's reports were central to thousands of cases, and the fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into "urge-ful" samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. email highlighted in the Velis-Merrigan report. Farak is amongst one of the 18 defendants battling the lawsuit filed by Rolando Penate. If there's ever any uncertainty over "whether exculpatory information should be disclosed," the Supreme Judicial Court later wrote, "the prosecutor must file a motion for a protective order and must present the information for a judge to review.". The defense bar had raised concerns that prosecutors might be "perceived as having a stake" in such an investigation. After serving just a year of her 18 month sentence, Farak was released from prison in 2015.