After serving for 13 months, she was released on parole in 2015. Verner, who testified that he didn't "micromanage" Kaczmarek, escaped criticism. Martha Coakley, then attorney general for the state, argued in Melendez-Diaz that a chemist's certificate contains only "neutral, objective facts." 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. 2. After graduating from Portsmouth High School, Farak attended the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she got a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry in 2000. 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. Ryan then filed a There were also newspaper articles about other officials caught stealing drugs, including one with a scribbled note, "Thank god I'm not a law enforcement officer." Due to the conviction, prosecutors were forced to dismiss more than . Fue arrestada el 19 de enero de 2013. 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. He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." Talking Politics: Should a new government agency protect the coastline from climate change? wrote she "tried to resist using @ work, but ended up failing." Without access to the diaries, the Springfield judge in 2013 found that Farak had starting stealing from samples in summer 2012. Farak was arrested the next day, and the attorney general's office assigned the case to Anne Kaczmarek. As the state's top court put it, the criminal investigation into Farak was "cursory at best.". Magistrate Judge Robertson denied a request in Penate's lawsuit that Kaczmarek be prohibited from contesting the special hearing officer's findings. 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! 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. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. Release year: 2020. 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. His is one of what lawyers say could be thousands of convictions questioned in the wake of the Farak scandal. Damning evidence reveals drug lab chemist Sonja Farak's addictions. The cocaine, found in an unsealed, completed drug-testing kit, tested negativemeaning Farak had seemingly replaced the formerly "positive" drugs with falsified substances. As How to Fix a Drug Scandal explores, Farak had long struggled with her mental . The fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. 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. Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. 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." "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. She started smoking crack cocaine in 2011 and was soon using it 10 to 12 times a day. Because she did so, Plaintiff served more than five years in a state prison.". Without even interviewing Foster, they determined there was "no evidence" of obstruction of justice by her, by Kaczmarek, or by any state prosecutor. 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. Penate was convicted in December 2013 and sentenced to serve five to seven years. Terms Of Use, (Annie Dookhan (left) and Sonja Farak, Associated Press). After serving just a year of her 18 month sentence, Farak was released from prison in 2015. Cleverly omitting pronouns, she wrote that "after reviewing" the file, "every documenthas been disclosed." 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. Because of all that, it's no surprise that Farak was sent to prison in Massachusetts. The Attorney Generals Office, Velis and Merrigan and the state police declined to answer questions about the handling of the Farak evidence. "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. Her job consisted of testing drugs that have. 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. And so, when she pleaded guilty in January 2014, Farak got what one attorney called "de facto immunity." Thank you! 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. The actions of Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan caused a racket of such a scale that the state had to recompense for it with millions of dollars and had to make a historic move in the dismissal of wrongful convictions. Support GBH. But she worried they might be privileged as health information. If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. Foster's first stepper ethical obligations and office protocolshould have been to look through the evidence to see what had already been handed over. Out of "an abundance of caution," Kaczmarek didn't present them to the grand jury that was convened to determine whether to indict Farak. During the next four years, she would periodically sober up and then relapse. It's not as bad as Dookhan, they asserted and implied over and over. I felt euphoric, Kogan wrote of Farak. At the time of her arrest, she had resided in 37 Laurel Park in Northampton. This is the story of Farak's drug-induced wrongdoings, and it's the. Chemist Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to "tampering with evidence" back in 2014 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. 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. In a rare move, the judicial office that brings disciplinary cases against lawyers in Massachusetts has accused a prosecutor of professional misconduct, including allegations that she failed to share critical information with defense lawyers and attempted to interfere with defense witnesses. And both pose the obvious question about how chemists could behave so badly for years without detection. In 2019, she was seen leaving the Springfield Federal Court but declined to comment on the status of the case. "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. Get all the latest from Sanditon on GBH Passport, How one Brookline studio helps artists with disabilities thrive. 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. According to an Attorney General Offices report, Farak attended Temple University in Philadelphia for graduate school, which is where she became a recreational drug user. At this point, Farakunlike Dookhandidn't admit anything. Fortunately, the courts largely ignored this shallow investigation. ", Officials rushed to downplay the situation in Amherst. 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. Velis said he stood by the findings. Between 2005 and 2013, Sonja Farak was performing laboratory tests at a state drug lab in Amherst while under the influence of narcotics. There is nothing to indicate that the allegations against Farak date back to the time she tested the drugs in Penates case. Local prosecutors also remained in the dark. 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. Name. 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. One thing that How to Fix a Drug Scandal makes clear is that it wasnt all Sonja Faraks fault. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015. Farak was getting high off the confiscated drugs police sent her way before replacing the evidence with fake drugs. food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. 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. 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. Patrick appointed the state inspector general to look into it. 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. A judge sentenced Dookhan to three years in prison; she was granted parole in April 2016. "The need to inform defendants of government misconduct does not disappear when that misconduct was committed by a government lawyer as opposed to a government chemist.". The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. She later called this dismissive exchange a "plea to God.". Listen Live: Classic and Contemporary Celtic, Listen Live: Cape, Coast and Islands NPR Station, Boston nonprofit Street2Ivy is producing this generation's entrepreneurs. 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. At some point, the attorney general's office stopped chasing leads entirely. She couldn't be sure which cases these were, Dookhan told investigators. As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. She was struggling to suppress mental health issues, depression in particular, and she tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone.
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