a certification of drug samples in Penates case on Dec. 22, 2011. Who is Sonja Farak, the former state drug lab chemist featured in the show? TherapyNotes Velis said he stood by the findings. ", Prosecutors maintained that Faraks rogue behavior spanned just a few months. After her arrest, she received support from her parents, who showed up to her court appearances, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported. From the April 2023 issue, Billy Binion And so, when she pleaded guilty in January 2014, Farak got what one attorney called "de facto immunity." 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. Sonja Farak is in the grip of a rubbed-raw depression that hasn't responded to medication. Since then, she has kept a low profile. A hearing on their motions is scheduled next month. Kaczmarek got a note from Sgt. "Whether law enforcement officials overlooked these papers or intentionally suppressed them is a question for another day.". Terms Of Use, (Annie Dookhan (left) and Sonja Farak, Associated Press). ", The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. Process Notes/Psychotherapy Notes Process notes are sometimes also referred to as psychotherapy notesthey're the notes you take during or after a session. Without even interviewing Foster, they determined there was "no evidence" of obstruction of justice by her, by Kaczmarek, or by any state prosecutor. 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. While Dookhan had tampered with evidence and indulged in dry-labbing, Farak stole from her workplace. Name. 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. 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. 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. Dookhan was sentenced to prison in 2013. Subscribe to Reason Roundup, a wrap up of the last 24 hours of news, delivered fresh each morning. 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. ordered a report on the history of her illicit behavior. Privacy Policy | 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. 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. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. 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. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. Farak apparently still tested each caseunlike Annie Dookhan, another Massachusetts chemist who was arrested five months prior to Farak for fabricating test results. Farak struggled with mental health throughout her life, the documentary series explains. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. (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. As extensively detailed in How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Farak was arrested on January 19, 2013. "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. motion with Hampden Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Kinder to see the evidence for himself. Netflix released a new docu-series called "How to Fix a Drug Scandal." Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. She had never quashed a subpoena before, but supervisors told her to fend off motions about Farak. At some point, the attorney general's office stopped chasing leads entirely. The defense bar had raised concerns that prosecutors might be "perceived as having a stake" in such an investigation. Dookhan's output remained implausibly high even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts (2009) that defendants were entitled to cross-examine forensic chemists about their analysis. 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." "The mental health worksheets constituted admissions by the state lab chemist assigned to analyze the samples seized in Plaintiffs case that she was stealing and using lab samples to feed a drug addiction at the time she was testing and certifying the samples in Plaintiffs case, including, in one instance, on the very day that she certified a sample," Robertson's ruling reads. 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 now spending less time at her lab bench and more time testifying in court about her results. Sonja Farak: Prosecutors kept drug abuse evidence secret so - MEAWW Below is an outline of her charges. Sonja Farak was a chemist at a state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 2005 to 2013. The drug lab technician was sent to prison for 18 months, but was released in 2015. May 2003 started working in Hinton drug lab p. 14. mentioned a New England Patriots game on Saturday, Dec. 24 which corresponded with a game date in 2011. Why did she do that and where has it left her? 3.4.2023 8:00 AM, Reason Staff Sonja Farak Cracked Out - Rough Diplomacy 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. Former State Chemist High At Work For Nearly 8 Years, Documents Say Like Hinton, the Amherst lab had no cameras. But she worried they might be privileged as health information. 3.3.2023 5:45 PM, Jacob Sullum Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility at GBH, Transparency in Coverage Cost-Sharing Disclosures. But in a Coakley did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. And yet, despite explicit requests for this kind of evidence, 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. Among other items, Kaczmarek 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 . 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. 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. State prosecutors gave Farak the immunity they had declined to grant two years earlier, then asked when she started analyzing samples while high. She was arrested in 2013 when the supervisor at the Amherst lab was made aware that two samples were missing. Introduction. email highlighted in the Velis-Merrigan report. Even the master's degree on her rsum was fabricated. Her medical records included notes from Faraks therapist in Amherst, Anna Kogan. 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. 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. If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. Thanks to Farak's testimony and those diary worksheets, we now know that, soon after joining the Amherst lab in 2004, Farak started skimming from the methamphetamine "standard," an undiluted oil used as a reference against which suspected meth samples are compared. 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. Without access to the diaries, the Springfield judge in 2013 found that Farak had starting stealing from samples in summer 2012. It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. Farak worked for the Amherst Drug Lab in Massachusetts for 9 years when she was convicted of stealing and using them. 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. Investigators either missed or declined opportunities to dig very deep. 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.". Inwardly though, Sonja Farak was striving. 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. Report shows more than 24k wrongful convictions dismissed in drug lab She had been accused of intentional infliction of emotional distress in addition to the conspiracy to violate [Penates] civil rights.. 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. To multiple courts' amazement, her incessant drug use never caught the attention of her co-workers. Judge Kinder denied Ryans motion. 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. Coakley assigned the case against Dookhan to Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek and her supervisor, John Verner. That settlement awaits approval by a judge. Patrick appointed the state inspector general to look into it. The charges against Penate were dismissed after Farak's conviction. 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. This not only led to people getting a reprieve from prison but also filing their own lawsuits against the injustice they had to suffer. How to Fix a Drug Scandal: behind a staggering Netflix crime docuseries 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. They pulled her aside as she walked back to the courthouse from her car, where she had smoked "a fair amount of crack" during her lunch break. Soon after Dookhan's arrest, Coakley's office asked the governor to order a broader independent probe of the Hinton lab. Farak. (Netflix) A former state chemist, Sonja Farak, made headlines in 2013 when she was arrested for stealing and using drugs from a laboratory. The judge ordered prosecutors and defense attorneys to coordinate on identifying undisclosed emails related to documents seized from the disgraced state crime lab chemist. ", Prosecutors nationwide pretty uniformly backed this argument, which the Supreme Court rejected in a 54 opinion. Sonja Farak in How to Fix a Drug Scandal. 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. Since her release, she has kept a low profile and managed to stay out of the public . It was. Massachusetts prosecutor tied to Sonja Farak drug lab scandal 'actively 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. 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." In 2017, a different judge ruled that Foster's actions constituted a "fraud upon the court," calling the letter "deliberately misleading." Stream GBH's Award-Winning Content For Parents And Children. "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. At the time of her arrest, she had resided in 37 Laurel Park in Northampton. 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. "No reasonablejury could conclude that this evidence is not favorable.". 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. 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. 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. Its no big deal, 14-year-old Farak said to the Panama City News Herald. 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. A. Judge Kinder ordered her to produce all potentially privileged documents for his review to determine whether they could be disclosed. The defense bar also demanded answers on how such crucial evidence stayed buried for so long. "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. Her notes record on-the-job drug use ranging from small nips of the lab's baseline. But Ryan, who represented Penate, suspected it was more extensive. Thank you! It was an astoundingly light touch for the second state chemist arrested in six months. 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. Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. 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. State chemist may have affected more drug cases than previously known Regarding the cases that she had handled, the Massachusetts courts threw out every case in the Amherst lab during her tenure. And when defense attorneys tried to do it themselves, Coakley's office blocked their efforts. Talking Politics: Should a new government agency protect the coastline from climate change? 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. 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. When grand jury materials were eventually released to defense attorneys, then, they did not mention that these documents existed. Accessibility | According to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Farak graduated with awards and distinctions. Sonja Farak. The number is 888-999-2881. One of the reasons for the decrepit state and standard of the Amherst lab was the lack of funds. When defense lawyers asked to see evidence for themselves, state prosecutors smeared them as pursuing a "fishing expedition.". We couldn't do it without you. But unlike with Dookhan, there were no independent investigations of Farak or the Amherst lab. Gov. 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. answered that the state considered the evidence irrelevant to any case other than Faraks.. denied Penates motion to dismiss the case, saying there was no evidence that Faraks misconduct extended to his case. When the Farak scandal erupted, that misconduct came into view. Martha Coakley, then attorney general for the state, argued in Melendez-Diaz that a chemist's certificate contains only "neutral, objective facts." another filing. The fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. 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.". Because of all that, it's no surprise that Farak was sent to prison in Massachusetts. The state and attorneys for some of the defendants agreed to a $14 million settlement to reimburse 31,000 defendants for post conviction-related costs, such as probation and parole fees, drug analysis and GPS monitoring. "If she were suffering from back injurymaybe she took some oxys?" 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. Farak as a young. . With your support, GBH will continue to innovate, inspire and connect through reporting you value that meets todays moments. And then the bigger investigation was going to be someone else.". 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! State officials rushed to condemn her loudly and publicly. Where is Sonja Farak from How To Fix A Drug Scandal now? 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. She's no longer in prison, as Farak has served her sentence. Fortunately, the courts largely ignored this shallow investigation. After serving for 13 months, she was released on parole in 2015. This very well could have been the end of the investigative trail but for a few stubborn defense lawyers, who appealed the ruling. The hotline is open Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. 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. She had unrestricted access to the evidence room. ", Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. Kaczmarek, along with former assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and John Verner, all face possible sanctions. shipped nearly 300 pages of previously undisclosed materials to local prosecutors around the state. They were all rendered unacceptable. In a letter filed with the Supreme Court, Julianne Nassif, a lab supervisor, wrote that Hinton had "appropriate quality control" measures. Both have since left the attorney general's office for other government positions. 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. Patrick said "the most important take-home" was that "no individual's due process rights were compromised.". As Kaczmarek herself later observed, Farak essentially had "a drugstore at her disposal" from her first day at the Amherst lab. GBH News brings you the stories, local voices, and big ideas that shape our world. It didnt matter whether or not she was the one who did the testing or some other chemist. Over time, Farak's drug use turned to cocaine, LSD and, eventually, crack. In 2012, she began taking from co-workers' samples, forging intake forms and editing the lab database to cover her tracks. Massachusetts crime lab scandal worsens: Dookhan and Farak. A year later, in October 2014, prosecutors relented, granting access to the full evidence in Farak's case to attorney Luke Ryan. 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. 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. Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. 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.". The report Foster protested that portions of the evidentiary file in question might be privileged or not subject to disclosure. Massachusetts DA seeks to vacate thousands of drug convictions - CNN
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