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. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. This is merely a fishing expedition, Foster wrote in 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. Who is Sonja Farak, the former state drug lab chemist featured in the show? 3.4.2023 8:00 AM, Reason Staff It's not as bad as Dookhan, they asserted and implied over and over. A status hearing on Penate's suit, which was filed in 2017, is scheduled for July. Damning evidence reveals drug lab chemist Sonja Farak's addictions. Farak is amongst one of the 18 defendants battling the lawsuit filed by Rolando Penate. Before her sentencing, Farak failed a drug test while out on bail, according to Mass Live. 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. Farak signed Kaczmarek argued the findings are subject to appeal. Two detectives found Farak at a courthouse waiting to testify on an unrelated matter. Prosecutors have an obligation to give the defense exculpatory evidence including anything that could weaken evidence against defendants. On a Friday afternoon in January 2013, a call came in to Coakley's office: "We have another Annie Dookhan out west.". 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. Velis said he stood by the findings. Gov. 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. email highlighted in the Velis-Merrigan report. When grand jury materials were eventually released to defense attorneys, then, they did not mention that these documents existed. They never searched Farak's computer or her home. 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." In 2017, a different judge ruled that Foster's actions constituted a "fraud upon the court," calling the letter "deliberately misleading." 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. 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. memo to Judge Kinder the next week, Foster said she reviewed the file, and said every document in it had already been disclosed. Though. 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. There is nothing to indicate that the allegations against Farak date back to the time she tested the drugs in Penates case. You can try, Suspensions and a reprimand proposed for prosecutors admonished in drug lab scandal. 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. As . After graduating from Portsmouth High School, Farak attended the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she got a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry in 2000. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. But when the relevant police reports were released to defense attorneys, there was no mention of the diary entries' existence, much less that they went back so far. In an August 2013 email, Ryan asked Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster to review evidence taken from Farak. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. She recovered, made it through college and got a job as a chemist at the Amherst Crime Lab, where she tested confiscated drugs. 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. 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. "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. 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. She was also under the influence when she took the stand during her trial. The fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. Hearings could help decide how many of thousands of convictions tainted by Farak's testing may be overturned. Foster protested that portions of the evidentiary file in question might be privileged or not subject to disclosure. From the March 2019 issue, "Tried to resist using @ work, but ended up failing," the forensic chemist scribbled on a diary worksheet she kept as part of her substance abuse therapy. The defense bar had raised concerns that prosecutors might be "perceived as having a stake" in such an investigation. In a March 2013 State prosecutors hadnt provided this evidence to other district attorneys offices contending with the Farak fallout, either. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. Asked for comment, Foster in January objected through an attorney that the judge never gave her an opportunity to defend herself and that his ruling left an "indelible stain on her reputation.". Sonja Farak is at the center of Netflix's new true crime docuseries, How To Fix a Drug Scandal. ", Prosecutors nationwide pretty uniformly backed this argument, which the Supreme Court rejected in a 54 opinion. ordered a report on the history of her illicit behavior. Deval Patrick's office didn't learn about the protocol breach until December 2011. 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. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. Ryan then filed a Scalia may as well have been describing Dookhan. They say court records and newly released emails show prosecutors sat on evidence they were familiar with that pointed to Faraks drug use in 2011, when she worked on Penates case. Relying on an investigation conducted by state police, the judges 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. She was struggling to suppress mental health issues, depression in particular, and she tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. The Netflix docuseries ends by acknowledging that Farak received an 18-month sentence, and that defense attorney Luke Ryan was able . And so, when she pleaded guilty in January 2014, Farak got what one attorney called "de facto immunity." Our streamlined software is accessible wherever and whenever you . Her answer: more than eight years before her arrest. 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. Farak started at Amherst lab in Aug 2004 p. 32. It included information about the type of drugs she tampered with. If they'd kept digging, defendants might still have learned the crucial facts. 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. Approximately one year later, she pled guilty to tampering with evidence, unlawful possession, and stealing narcotics. 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. 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. 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.". She soon crossed all these lines. 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 . We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. Farak as a young. Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak. concluded there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or obstruction of justice in matters related to the Farak case. Joseph . . Martha Coakley, then attorney general for the state, argued in Melendez-Diaz that a chemist's certificate contains only "neutral, objective facts." Farak worked for the Amherst Drug Lab in Massachusetts for 9 years when she was convicted of stealing and using them. answered that the state considered the evidence irrelevant to any case other than Faraks.. 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. The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. In court, she added that there was "no smoking gun" in the evidence. She was released in 2015, as reported by Mass Live. 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. He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." Both have since left the attorney general's office for other government positions. Yet 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. To better estimate how many convictions will have to be reviewed because of Farak, the Supreme Judicial Court Even the master's degree on her rsum was fabricated. She even made her own crack in the lab. This not only led to people getting a reprieve from prison but also filing their own lawsuits against the injustice they had to suffer. Sonja Farak was a chemist at a state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 2005 to 2013. Meier put the number at 40,323 defendants, though some have called that an overestimate. Kaczmarek was now juggling two scandals on opposite sides of the state. Why did she do that and where has it left her? The crucial fact of her longstanding and frequent drug use also never made it into Farak's trial, much less to defendants appealing convictions predicated on her tainted analyses. More than 24,000 convictions in 16,449 cases tainted by former state chemist Sonja Farak have been dismissed in a court case brought by the ACLU of Massachusetts, the Committee of Public Counsel Services (CPCS), and law firm Fick & Marx LLP. 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 . The governor didn't appoint the inspector general or anyone else to determine how long Farak was altering samples or running analyses while high. This story is an effort to reconstruct what was known about Farak and Dookhan's crimes, and when, based on court filings, diaries, and interviews with the major players. | After she was caught, Farak pleaded guilty to stealing drugs from the lab and was sentenced to prison time of 18 months. 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. "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents," Ryan wrote to the attorney general's office. It didnt matter whether or not she was the one who did the testing or some other chemist. When defense lawyers asked to see evidence for themselves, state prosecutors smeared them as pursuing a "fishing expedition.". 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. One colleague called her the "super woman of the lab. She was ar-rested for tampering with evidence while abusing narcotics at work. 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. Mucha gente que vio el programa se pregunta: dnde est Sonja Farak ahora? She was also testifying in court while high. Penate is seeking a new trial, contending the conviction should be reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct and evidence tainted by Farak. The justices ordered Healey's department to cover all costs of notifying all defendants whose cases were dismissed. When Farak was arrested,former Attorney General Martha Coakley told the public investigators believed Farak tampered with drugs at the lab for only a few months. "No reasonable individual could have failed to appreciate the unlawfulness of [Kaczmarek's] actions in these circumstances," Robertson wrote in her ruling. 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. 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. 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. With the Dookhan case so fresh, reporters immediately labeled Farak "the second chemist. That motion was denied, and the notice letters will explain Farak's tampering without any mention of prosecutorial misconduct. This threw every sample she had ever tested into question. At this point, Farakunlike Dookhandidn't admit anything. 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. Disgraced drug lab chemist Sonja Farak emerges as her own attorney as defendant in $5.7 million federal lawsuit. 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.. Since then, she has kept a low profile. Months after Farak pleaded guilty in January 2014, Ryan filed a 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. "I was totally controlled by my addiction," Farak later testified. 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. Inwardly though, Sonja Farak was striving. "These drugswere tested fairly," Coakley claimed the day after Farak's arrest. . It's been like this forever, or at least since girlhood. 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. "If she were suffering from back injurymaybe she took some oxys?" 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. Coakley did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. Several defense attorneys who called for the Velis-Merrigan investigation say the former judges and their state police investigators got it wrong. Process Notes/Psychotherapy Notes Process notes are sometimes also referred to as psychotherapy notesthey're the notes you take during or after a session. Four months after Ryan found the worksheets, Judge Kinder She grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. But absent evidence of aggravating misconduct by prosecutors or cops, the majority ruled, Dookhan's tampering alone didn't justify a blanket dismissal of every case she had touched. While Dookhan had tampered with evidence and indulged in dry-labbing, Farak stole from her workplace. They tend to be more freeform notes about the session and your impressions of the client's statements and demeanour. 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." The medical records stated that she did not have an existing drug problem that was amplified by her access to more substances. If Farak found a substance was a true drug, the person it was confiscated from could be convicted of a substance-related crime. 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. The story of the intertwining Farak and Penate evidence began in January 2013, when state police arrested Farak and searched her car. But Ryan, who represented Penate, suspected it was more extensive. His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. Two weeks after Ryans discovery, the Attorney Generals Office (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. 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. 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. | 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. 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. With your support, GBH will continue to innovate, inspire and connect through reporting you value that meets todays moments. ", But another co-worker was suspicious, particularly since he "never saw Dookhan in front of a microscope.". 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.
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