Over time, Farak's drug use turned to cocaine, LSD and, eventually, crack. Support GBH. 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. "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.". She started seeing a substance abuse therapist around this time. Foster replied that because the investigation against Farak was ongoing, she couldnt let him see it. GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting. A. Local prosecutors also remained in the dark. Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. 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. food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. Why Won't Maryland Sell Me a Goddamn Beer? A hearing on their motions is scheduled next month. We couldn't do it without you. | wrote to the Attorney Generals Office two days later. El 6 de enero de 2014, Farak se declar culpable de los cargos en su contra. The lax security and regulations of the place and the negligent supervision of the employees and the stock of standards are the reasons why Farak was encouraged to do what she did. This article originally appeared in print under the headline "The Chemists and the Cover-Up". From 2004 to 2013, Farak took advantage of . Disgraced drug lab chemist Sonja Farak emerges as her own attorney as defendant in $5.7 million federal lawsuit. This was not true, as Nassif's department later conceded. Months after Farak pleaded guilty in January 2014, Ryan filed a Meanwhile, other top prosecutors, including Coakley, largely escaped criticism for their collective failure to hand over evidence that they were bound by constitutional mandate to share with defendants. 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 . Sonja Farak was a chemist for a state crime lab in Massachusetts. 3.4.2023 8:00 AM, Reason Staff 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. The former judges and the state police officers who helped them conducted a thorough review, said Emalie Gainey, spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey. They never searched Farak's computer or her home. Four months after Ryan found the worksheets, Judge Kinder Foster and another assistant attorney general assented to that 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. ", But another co-worker was suspicious, particularly since he "never saw Dookhan in front of a microscope.". She even made her own crack in the lab. Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. Sonja Farak is in the grip of a rubbed-raw depression that hasn't responded to medication. 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. Her access to evidence was not restricted, and she continued testifying in court. 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. 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. Verner, who testified that he didn't "micromanage" Kaczmarek, escaped criticism. Deval Patrick's office didn't learn about the protocol breach until December 2011. 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. "It was almost like Dookhan wanted to get caught," one of her former co-workers told state police in 2012. 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. As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. 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 chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. 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. The surveillance of the chemists as well as the standards and the confiscated drugs has also been increased considerably. 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. She had never quashed a subpoena before, but supervisors told her to fend off motions about Farak. (Featured Image Credit: Mass Live). Farak struggled with mental health throughout her life, the documentary series explains. She said, It was about coping; it certainly wasnt about having fun; I dont think shes had fun in quite a while.. Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education. The results of that intake interview and notes from several of Farak's therapists all detailing Farak's drug use going back years were obtained by defense attorneys on behalf of . In June 2011, Dookhan secretly took 90 samples out of an evidence locker and then forged a co-worker's initials to check them back in, a clear chain-of-custody breach. Foster protested that portions of the evidentiary file in question might be privileged or not subject to disclosure. But unlike with Dookhan, no one launched a bigger investigation of Farak. 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. Among the papers they seized were handwritten worksheets Farak completed for drug-abuse therapy. Patrick appointed the state inspector general to look into it. She recovered, made it through college and got a job as a chemist at the Amherst Crime Lab, where she tested confiscated drugs. In January of 2013, Sonja Farak, a chemist at a state crime lab in Massachusetts, was arrested for tampering with evidence related to criminal drug cases (Small, 2020).A year later, Farak pleaded guilty to tampering with drug evidence, theft of a controlled substance, and drug possession .She received a sentence of 18 months with 5 years of probation and was released in 2015. Farak started at Amherst lab in Aug 2004 p. 32. If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. Thus, only defendants whose evidence she tested in the six-month window before her arrest could challenge their cases. "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents, Ryan As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . 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. A local prosecutor also asked Ballou to look into a case Farak had tested as far back as 2005. "The gravity of the present case cannot be overstated," Kaczmarek wrote in her memo recommending a prison sentence of five to seven years. Between the two women, 47,000 drug convictions and guilty pleas have been dismissed in the last two years, many for misdemeanor possession. When the Farak scandal erupted, that misconduct came into view. Between 2005 and 2013, Sonja Farak was performing laboratory tests at a state drug lab in Amherst while under the influence of narcotics. 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. concluded there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or obstruction of justice in matters related to the Farak case. 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. Both have since left the attorney general's office for other government positions. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. motion on behalf of another client to see the evidence. 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.. Most important, they found seven worksheets from Farak's substance abuse therapy. Farak was getting high off the confiscated drugs police sent her way before replacing the evidence with fake drugs. Kaczmarek also oversaw the prosecution for the attorney general's office in that case. Terms Of Use, (Annie Dookhan (left) and Sonja Farak, Associated Press). 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. Shawn Musgrave memo to Judge Kinder the next week, Foster said she reviewed the file, and said every document in it had already been disclosed. Follow us so you don't miss a thing! "If she were suffering from back injurymaybe she took some oxys?" After she was caught, Farak pleaded guilty to stealing drugs from the lab and was sentenced to prison time of 18 months. The drug lab technician was sent to prison for 18 months, but was released in 2015. Thank you! Farak apparently still tested each caseunlike Annie Dookhan, another Massachusetts chemist who was arrested five months prior to Farak for fabricating test results. The defense bar had raised concerns that prosecutors might be "perceived as having a stake" in such an investigation. Kaczmarek got a note from Sgt. 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. This very well could have been the end of the investigative trail but for a few stubborn defense lawyers, who appealed the ruling. Like Hinton, the Amherst lab had no cameras. The medical records stated that she did not have an existing drug problem that was amplified by her access to more substances. Hearings could help decide how many of thousands of convictions tainted by Farak's testing may be overturned. "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. I felt euphoric, Kogan wrote of Farak. 3.3.2023 5:45 PM, Jacob Sullum "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. He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." 1. She was struggling to suppress mental health issues, depression in particular, and she tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. But she worried they might be privileged as health information. 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. The defense bar also demanded answers on how such crucial evidence stayed buried for so long. If they'd kept digging, defendants might still have learned the crucial facts. Kaczmarek had obtained the evidence at issue while she was prosecuting Farak on state charges of tampering with evidence and drug possession.
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