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. A scandal erupts, raising questions for the thousands of defendants in her cases. Penate was convicted in December 2013 and sentenced to serve five to seven years. Regarding the cases that she had handled, the Massachusetts courts threw out every case in the Amherst lab during her tenure. Get all the latest from Sanditon on GBH Passport, How one Brookline studio helps artists with disabilities thrive. But she insisted the drugs didn't compromise her worka belief that one judge would aptly declare "belies logic.". She's no longer in prison, as Farak has served her sentence. Widening scandal at state drug lab in Mass. exposes opportunities for Deval Patrick's office didn't learn about the protocol breach until December 2011. High Massachusetts Lab Chemist Causes Thousands Of Drug Cases To Be Dismissed. 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. Read More: Where is Sonja Farak Sister Now? Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. The Hinton drug lab, operated by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, appears to have been run largely on the honor system. Name. The Farak documents indicate she used drugs on the very day she certified samples as heroin in Penates case. There is nothing to indicate that the allegations against Farak date back to the time she tested the drugs in Penates case. Her wrongdoings were exposed when unsealed cocaine and a crack pipe were found under her desk. Farak started at Amherst lab in Aug 2004 p. 32. Shawn Musgrave is a reporter who was until recently based in Boston. food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. Where Is Sonja Farak Now? 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. Netflix's How to Fix a Drug Scandal: A staggering true story of - Vox "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.". 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. 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. Disgraced drug lab chemist Sonja Farak emerges as her own attorney as defendant in $5.7 million federal lawsuit. 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. 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.". Farak admitted to being on a list of drugs while working between 2004 and her 2013 arrest. Foster 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 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. Her role was to test for the presence of illegal substances, which could be instrumental in thousands of . The Amherst lab had called state police when the two missing samples were noticed in 2013. Judge Kinder denied Ryans motion. In 2017, a different judge ruled that Foster's actions constituted a "fraud upon the court," calling the letter "deliberately misleading." Most important, they found seven worksheets from Farak's substance abuse therapy. 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. Coakley assigned the case against Dookhan to Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek and her supervisor, John Verner. They tend to be more freeform notes about the session and your impressions of the client's statements and demeanour. In the aftermath of Farak's arrest, it's been argued that because she was under the influence, all of the cases she tested could be considered to have been wrongfully convicted. wrote to the Attorney Generals Office two days later. In the aftermath, the court felt it necessary to make clear that "no prosecutorhas the authority to decline to disclose exculpatory information.". Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015. He didn't buy her quibbling that there's a difference between an explicit lie and obfuscation by grammar. In the series, it's explained that Farak loved the energy the meth gave her. State officials rushed to condemn her loudly and publicly. 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. Initially, she had represented herself in answer to the complaints lodged against her, but later, she turned to Susan Sachs, who represented her since, not just on the Penate lawsuit, but also on any other case that emerged as the result of her actions in Amherst. 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 . "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. One reason that didn't happen, he says: "the determination Coakley and her team made the morning after Farak's arrest that her misconduct did not affect the due process rights of any Farak defendants." 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. Poetically, that landmark case originated from the Hinton lab, although Dookhan didn't conduct the analysis in question. 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 recovered, made it through college and got a job as a chemist at the Amherst Crime Lab, where she tested confiscated drugs. Massachusetts drug lab scandal tied to Sonja Farak and Hinton Lab The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. 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. 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. A hearing on their motions is scheduled next month. sonja farak - masslive.com It didnt matter whether or not she was the one who did the testing or some other chemist. Foster replied that because the investigation against Farak was ongoing, she couldnt let him see it. She had been accused of intentional infliction of emotional distress in addition to the conspiracy to violate [Penates] civil rights.. 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. Having barely investigated her, prosecutors indicted Farak only for the samples in her possession the day she was caught. 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. Report shows more than 24k wrongful convictions dismissed in drug lab You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. In a March 2013 Emma Camp 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. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015 Contributed by Shawn Musgrave (Musgrave Investigations) p. 1. She was arrested in 2013 when the supervisor at the Amherst lab was made aware that two samples were missing. As How to Fix a Drug Scandal explores, Farak had long struggled with her mental . ", Officials rushed to downplay the situation in Amherst. The number is 888-999-2881. Penate is seeking a new trial, contending the conviction should be reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct and evidence tainted by Farak. Instead, Kaczmarek proceeded as if the substance abuse was a recent development. 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.". One of the reasons for the decrepit state and standard of the Amherst lab was the lack of funds. The court also dismissed all meth cases processed at the lab since Farak started in 2004. On the surface, their crimes dont seem as injurious and they dont seem to enjoy inflicting pain on others. The Chemists and the Cover-Up - Reason.com His report deemed Dookhan the "sole bad actor" at the lab, a finding that remains disputed in some circles. 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. Yet Dookhan's brazen crimes went undetected for ages. Obviously, after a blunder of such scale, no one would want their samples checked from the same lab. 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. Massachusetts prosecutor tied to Sonja Farak drug lab scandal 'actively The state's top court took an even harsher view, ruling in October 2018 that the attorney general's office as an institution was responsible for the prosecutorial misconduct of its former employees. 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. It's not as bad as Dookhan, they asserted and implied over and over. 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. Penate's suit said Kaczmarek withheld evidence that Farak used drugs at the lab for longer than the Massachusetts attorney general's office first claimed, and that he would not have been imprisoned based on tainted evidence. Thank you! And so, when she pleaded guilty in January 2014, Farak got what one attorney called "de facto immunity." Why Won't Maryland Sell Me a Goddamn Beer? "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. Two detectives found Farak at a courthouse waiting to testify on an unrelated matter. That motion was denied, and the notice letters will explain Farak's tampering without any mention of prosecutorial misconduct. Sonja Farak. It included information about the type of drugs she tampered with. (Conveniently, they also found a Patriots schedule from 2011 in the car.). We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. After the Supreme Court's decision, a skeptical colleague started tracking how many microscope slides Dookhan used to test samples for cocaine. The twin Massachusetts drug lab scandals are unprecedented in the sheer number of cases thrown out because of forensic misconduct. Fortunately, the courts largely ignored this shallow investigation. (Featured Image Credit: Mass Live). 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. concluded there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or obstruction of justice in matters related to the Farak case. Kaczmarek argued before the BBO, and in response to Penate's lawsuit, that she was focused on prosecuting Farak and not defendants, like Penate, whose criminal cases were affected by Farak's misconduct. When defense lawyers asked to see evidence for themselves, state prosecutors smeared them as pursuing a "fishing expedition.". On paper, these numbers made Dookhan the most productive chemist at Hinton; the next most productive averaged around 300 samples per month. 1. 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. She was also under the influence when she took the stand during her trial. How To Write Therapy Progress Notes: 8 Templates & Examples - Quenza 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. . One thing that How to Fix a Drug Scandal makes clear is that it wasnt all Sonja Faraks fault. 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.". During her trial, her defense lawyer Elaine Pourinski said that Farak wasnt taking drugs to party, but instead to control her depression. It was. 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. From 2004 to 2013, Farak took advantage of . You can try, Suspensions and a reprimand proposed for prosecutors admonished in drug lab scandal. According to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Farak graduated with awards and distinctions. Dookhan was now spending less time at her lab bench and more time testifying in court about her results. 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. The Dookhan prosecution was barely underway, a grand jury having returned indictments a few weeks earlier. In Farak's car, police found a "works kit"crack cocaine, a spatula, and copper mesh, often used as a pipe filter. After she was caught, Farak pleaded guilty to stealing drugs from the lab and was sentenced to prison time of 18 months. Former chemist Annie Dookhan was convicted in 2013 on charges of improperly testing drug evidence at a drug lab in Boston. Sonja Farak, a state forensic chemist in western Massachusetts, was minutes away from testifying in a drug case in early 2013 when attorneys learned she was about to be arrested on charges of. "The gravity of the present case cannot be overstated," Kaczmarek wrote in her memo recommending a prison sentence of five to seven years. mentioned a New England Patriots game on Saturday, Dec. 24 which corresponded with a game date in 2011. Because she did so, Plaintiff served more than five years in a state prison.". The attorney general's officeKaczmarek or her supervisorscould have asked a judge to determine whether the worksheets were actually privileged, as Kaczmarek later acknowledged. GBH News brings you the stories, local voices, and big ideas that shape our world. 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. 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. She grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. As federal food benefits decline, Mass. If they'd kept digging, defendants might still have learned the crucial facts.

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