Support GBH. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, Sonja Farak is the subject of Netflix's "How To Fix a Drug Scandal. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. Farak was arrested the next day, and the attorney general's office assigned the case to Anne Kaczmarek. 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. Our streamlined software is accessible wherever and whenever you . 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. Exhausted from the ongoing scandal in Boston, state officials were desperate for damage control. "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents," Ryan wrote to the attorney general's office. Compromised drug samples often fit the definition. The defense bar also demanded answers on how such crucial evidence stayed buried for so long. Episode 2. 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, 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. Who is Sonja Farak, the former state drug lab chemist featured in the show? ", The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. 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.". | memo to Judge Kinder the next week, Foster said she reviewed the file, and said every document in it had already been disclosed. Two detectives found Farak at a courthouse waiting to testify on an unrelated matter. "It is critical that all parties have unquestioned faith in that process from the beginning so that they will have full confidence in the conclusions drawn at the end," Coakley said. email highlighted in the Velis-Merrigan report. Deborah Becker Twitter Host/ReporterDeborah Becker is a senior correspondent and host at WBUR. "I suspect that if another entity was in the mix"perhaps the inspector general or an independent investigator"the Attorney General's Office would have treated the Farak case much more seriously and would have been much more reluctant to hide the ball," Ryan writes in an email. Investigators gave that information to Kaczmarek and the state AG's office,according tohearings before thestate board that disciplines attorneys. 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. She had unrestricted access to the evidence room. The newest true crime series from Netflix, How to Fix a Drug Scandal, was released on April 1, 2020. Massachusetts prosecutors withheld evidence of corrupt state narcotics testing for months from a defendant facing drug charges, and didnt release it until after his conviction, according to newly surfaced documents and emails. They were found with their packaging sliced open and their contents apparently altered. How to Fix a Drug Scandal: With Shannon O'Neill, Karl Kenzler, Paul Solotaroff, Scott Allen. Coakley assigned the case against Dookhan to Assistant Attorney General Anne Kaczmarek and her supervisor, John Verner. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the lab. Foster and another assistant attorney general assented to that motion. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015. 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 . Though. 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. Because she did so, Plaintiff served more than five years in a state prison.". 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. 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 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. Tens of thousands of criminal drug cases were dismissed as a result of misconduct by Dookhan and Farak. State prosecutors hadnt provided this evidence to other district attorneys offices contending with the Farak fallout, either. Sonja Farak is in the grip of a rubbed-raw depression that hasn't responded to medication. 3.3.2023 5:45 PM, Jacob Sullum Cleverly omitting pronouns, she wrote that "after reviewing" the file, "every documenthas been disclosed." The Farak documents indicate she used drugs on the very day she certified samples as heroin in Penates case. One thing that How to Fix a Drug Scandal makes clear is that it wasnt all Sonja Faraks fault. Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. Sonja Farak is at the center of Netflix's new true crime docuseries, How To Fix a Drug Scandal. 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. 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." After high school, Sonja went on to major in biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts. Perhaps, as criminal justice scandals inevitably emerge, we need to get more independent eyes on the evidence from the start. 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. Many more are likely to follow, with the total expected to exceed 50,000. She was arrested in 2013 when the supervisor at the Amherst lab was made aware that two samples were missing. Kaczmarek argued for qualified immunity after she was sued by Rolando Penate, who spent five years in prison on drug charges in which the evidence in his case was tested by Farak. A few months before her arrest, Farak's counselor recommended in-patient rehab. As . 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.". This article originally appeared in print under the headline "The Chemists and the Cover-Up". Most important, they found seven worksheets from Farak's substance abuse therapy. The defense bar had raised concerns that prosecutors might be "perceived as having a stake" in such an investigation. And then the bigger investigation was going to be someone else.". Deval Patrick's office didn't learn about the protocol breach until December 2011. ", But another co-worker was suspicious, particularly since he "never saw Dookhan in front of a microscope.". Farak trabaj en el laboratorio Amherst desde el verano de 2004 y poco despus comenz a tomar las drogas del laboratorio. During her trial, her defense lawyer Elaine Pourinski said that Farak wasnt taking drugs to party, but instead to control her depression. "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. Where is Sonja now? She later called this dismissive exchange a "plea to God.". The case of Rolando Penate has become a leading example for lawyers calling for further investigation into alleged misconduct by prosecutors who handled documents seized from Sonja Farak, the Amherst crime-lab chemist convicted of stealing and tampering with drug samples. One was clearly dated November 16, 2011a year and two months before her arrest. She was released in 2015, as reported by Mass Live. 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. In 2009, Farak branched out to the lab's amphetamine, phentermine, and cocaine standards. Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. Even before her arrest, the Department of Public Health had launched an internal inquiry into how such misconduct had gone undetected for such a long time. 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.". A drug chemist . 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. During the next four years, she would periodically sober up and then relapse. GBH News brings you the stories, local voices, and big ideas that shape our world. 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. 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. 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. Maybe it's not a matter of checklists or reminders that prosecutors have to keep their eyes open for improprieties. 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. Both scandals undercut confidence in the criminal justice system and the validity of forensic analysis. 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. If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. This is the story of Farak's drug-induced wrongdoings, and it's the. another filing. 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. The information showed that Farak sought therapy for drug addiction and that her misconduct had been ongoing for years. Netflix released a new docu-series called "How to Fix a Drug Scandal." Despite such unequivocal findings of misconduct, the court removed language about Kaczmarek and Foster from notification letters to those whose cases have been dismissed, which will be sent out in early 2019. Farak as a young. Instead, Kaczmarek proceeded as if the substance abuse was a recent development. Kaczmarek quoted the worksheets in a memo to her supervisor, Verner, and others, summarizing that they revealed Farak's "struggle with substance abuse." The attorney general's representative at these hearings was Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster, a recent hire. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the Amherst lab in 2004. 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. According to the notes, Farak thought it gave her energy, helped her to get things done and not procrastinate, feel more positive., Her partner Nikki Lee testified before a grand jury that she herself had tried cocaine, that she had observed Farak using cocaine in 2000, and that she had marijuana in her house when police officers arrived to search the premises as part of their investigation of Farak., In Faraks testimony during a grand jury investigation, she said that she became a recreational drug user during graduate school and used cocaine, marihuana, and ecstasy. She also said she used heroin one time and was nervous and sick and hated every minute of it [and had] no desire to use [it] again., Farak met and settled down with Nikki Lee in her 20s. On paper, these numbers made Dookhan the most productive chemist at Hinton; the next most productive averaged around 300 samples per month. When grand jury materials were eventually released to defense attorneys, then, they did not mention that these documents existed. Sonja Farak had admitted to stealing and using drugs from the drug lab where she worked as a chemist for around 9 years. The report
This scandal has thrown thousands of drug cases into question, on top of more than 24,000 cases tainted by a scandal involving ex-chemist Annie Dookhan at the state's Hinton Lab in Jamaica Plain. I felt euphoric, Kogan wrote of Farak. 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. 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." (Featured Image Credit: Mass Live). They never searched Farak's computer or her home. . The number is 888-999-2881. They tend to be more freeform notes about the session and your impressions of the client's statements and demeanour. Her ar-rest led to the dismissal of thousands of drug cases in Massachusetts. Democratic Gov. "No reasonablejury could conclude that this evidence is not favorable.". Penate argued the court should follow those findings. There is no allegation of misconduct against the local prosecutors who presented the case against Penate in Hampden County Superior Court. She recovered, made it through college and got a job as a chemist at the Amherst Crime Lab, where she tested confiscated drugs. And so, when she pleaded guilty in January 2014, Farak got what one attorney called "de facto immunity." 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. Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. 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. 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.". Sonja Farak was a chemist for a state crime lab in Massachusetts. Farak. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility at GBH, Transparency in Coverage Cost-Sharing Disclosures. Local prosecutors also remained in the dark. "Dookhan's consistently high testing volumes should have been a clear indication that a more thorough analysis and review of her work was needed," an internal review found. The fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. The governor didn't appoint the inspector general or anyone else to determine how long Farak was altering samples or running analyses while high. "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. Farak wasn't the first Massachusetts chemist to tamper with drug evidence. Introduction. Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. Thank you! The governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. Her notes record on-the-job drug use ranging from small nips of the lab's baseline. Two weeks after Ryans discovery, the Attorney Generals Office
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. Meier put the number at 40,323 defendants, though some have called that an overestimate. She's no longer in prison, as Farak has served her sentence.