Regarding the cases that she had handled, the Massachusetts courts threw out every case in the Amherst lab during her tenure. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the Amherst lab in 2004. Penate argued the court should follow those findings. 2. 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. Penate was convicted in December 2013 and sentenced to serve five to seven years. A. Introduction. A hearing on their motions is scheduled next month. memo to Judge Kinder the next week, Foster said she reviewed the file, and said every document in it had already been disclosed. 3.3.2023 5:45 PM, Jacob Sullum This is the story of Farak's drug-induced wrongdoings, and it's the. 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. She was sentenced in 2014 to 18 months in prison and 5 years of probation. Process Notes/Psychotherapy Notes Process notes are sometimes also referred to as psychotherapy notesthey're the notes you take during or after a session. Gov. 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.". Coakley's office finally launched a criminal investigation in July 2012, more than a year after the infraction was discovered by Dookhan's supervisors. Coakley did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. 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. Dookhan was sentenced to prison in 2013. She was also under the influence when she took the stand during her trial. Coakley assigned the case against Dookhan to Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek and her supervisor, John Verner. 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. How to Fix A Drug Scandal takes a one-woman issue in a crumbling police drug lab and follows the way it blew up an entire legal system. And so, when she pleaded guilty in January 2014, Farak got what one attorney called "de facto immunity." food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. Investigators gave that information to Kaczmarek and the state AG's office,according tohearings before thestate board that disciplines attorneys. In June 2017, following hearings in which Kaczmarek, Foster, Verner, and others took the stand, a judge found that Kaczmarek and Foster together "piled misrepresentation upon misrepresentation to shield the mental health worksheets from disclosure.". Netflix released a new docu-series called "How to Fix a Drug Scandal." Why did she do that and where has it left her? Privacy Policy | You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. The former judges and the state police officers who helped them conducted a thorough review, said Emalie Gainey, spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey. "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. If Farak found a substance was a true drug, the person it was confiscated from could be convicted of a substance-related crime. "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.". She started seeing a substance abuse therapist around this time. 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. answered that the state considered the evidence irrelevant to any case other than Faraks.. 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.. 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. After graduating from Portsmouth High School, Farak attended the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she got a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry in 2000. "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. The medical records stated that she did not have an existing drug problem that was amplified by her access to more substances. This article originally appeared in print under the headline "The Chemists and the Cover-Up". But why were a small handful of prosecutors allowed total control over evidence about one of the worst criminal justice failures in recent memory? Kaczmarek, along with former assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and John Verner, all face possible sanctions. 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. 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. The Amherst lab had called state police when the two missing samples were noticed in 2013. The court also dismissed all meth cases processed at the lab since Farak started in 2004. In worksheet notes dated Thursday, Dec. 22, Farak Maybe it's not a matter of checklists or reminders that prosecutors have to keep their eyes open for improprieties. Chemist Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to "tampering with evidence" back in 2014 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. Even as they filed numerous motions for information about how long Farak had been using drugs, the defense attorneys had no idea these worksheets existed. | This immediately provoked questions about the thousands of cases in which her findings had contributed to the imprisonment of an individual. Kaczmarek quoted the worksheets in a memo to her supervisor, Verner, and others, summarizing that they revealed Farak's "struggle with substance abuse." Shawn Musgrave One was clearly dated November 16, 2011a year and two months before her arrest. She had unrestricted access to the evidence room. Shortly into her role at Amherst, Farak decided to try liquid methamphetamine to ease her personal struggles. It didnt matter whether or not she was the one who did the testing or some other chemist. His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. 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. 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 need to inform defendants of government misconduct does not disappear when that misconduct was committed by a government lawyer as opposed to a government chemist.". 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. He was floored when he found the worksheets. Relying on an investigation conducted by state police, the judges To better estimate how many convictions will have to be reviewed because of Farak, the Supreme Judicial Court According to a newspaper article from 1992, she was the first female in Rhode Island to be on a high school football team. 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. Foster protested that portions of the evidentiary file in question might be privileged or not subject to disclosure. Instead, Coakley's office served as gatekeeper to evidence that could have untangled the scandal and freed thousands of people from prison and jail years earlier, or at least wiped their improper convictions off the books. And when defense attorneys tried to do it themselves, Coakley's office blocked their efforts. 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. Joseph Ballou, lead investigator for the state police, called them the most important documents from the car. 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. In the series, it's explained that Farak loved the energy the meth gave her. During the next four years, she would periodically sober up and then relapse. The staff in the new lab was also doubled, and the number of trainees was also increased. 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. The cocaine, found in an unsealed, completed drug-testing kit, tested negativemeaning Farak had seemingly replaced the formerly "positive" drugs with falsified substances. Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. 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. 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. The hotline is open Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. "he didn't request a warrant. 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. 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. In 2012, she began taking from co-workers' samples, forging intake forms and editing the lab database to cover her tracks. The special hearing officer found Kaczmarek "displayed no remorse" and was "not candid" during the disciplinary proceedings. "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 defense bar had raised concerns that prosecutors might be "perceived as having a stake" in such an investigation. But unlike with Dookhan, there were no independent investigations of Farak or the Amherst lab. 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 show also delves into the issues of the state in discovering and reporting on the extent of the cases that were affected by Faraks actions. 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. Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education. 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. Where is Sonja now?
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