Tens of thousands of criminal drug cases were dismissed as a result of misconduct by Dookhan and Farak. 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. Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. 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. Where Is Sonja Farak From 'How To Fix A Drug Scandal' Now? - Women's Health 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. "First, of course, are the defendants, who when charged in the criminal justice system have the right to expect that they will be given due process and there will be fair and accurate information used in any prosecution against them." It was. Instead, Kaczmarek proceeded as if the substance abuse was a recent development. 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. ", Prosecutors nationwide pretty uniformly backed this argument, which the Supreme Court rejected in a 54 opinion. Without access to the diaries, the Springfield judge in 2013 found that Farak had starting stealing from samples in summer 2012. Given the account that Farak was a law-abiding citizen, it is questioned as to how an 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. She was arrested in 2013 when the supervisor at the Amherst lab was made aware that two samples were missing. And yet, despite explicit requests for this kind of evidence, 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. 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. "Because on almost a daily basis Farak abused narcoticsthere is no assurance that she was able to perform chemical analysis correctly," the judge found. The scandal led. Because state prosecutors hid Farak's substance abuse diaries, it took far too long for the full timeline of her crimes to become public. 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. The attorney general's representative at these hearings was Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster, a recent hire. The attorney general's officeKaczmarek or her supervisorscould have asked a judge to determine whether the worksheets were actually privileged, as Kaczmarek later acknowledged. Farak signed She had been accused of intentional infliction of emotional distress in addition to the conspiracy to violate [Penates] civil rights.. 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. 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. Two drug lab chemists' shocking crimes cripple a state's judicial system and blur the lines of justice for lawyers, officials and thousands of inmates. Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. She tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. When the Farak scandal erupted, that misconduct came into view. Farak struggled with mental health throughout her life, the documentary series explains. As . 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.. It took another three years for the truth to emerge. Between the two women, 47,000 drug convictions and guilty pleas have been dismissed in the last two years, many for misdemeanor possession. 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. Most important, they found seven worksheets from Farak's substance abuse therapy. Her answer: more than eight years before her arrest. Without even interviewing Foster, they determined there was "no evidence" of obstruction of justice by her, by Kaczmarek, or by any state prosecutor. 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. Massachusetts crime lab scandal worsens: Dookhan and Farak. 1. In a March 2013 To better estimate how many convictions will have to be reviewed because of Farak, the Supreme Judicial Court His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. 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. At the very least, we expected that we would get everything they collected in their case against Farak. Flannery, now in private practice, said the substance abuse worksheets are clearly relevant to defendants challenging Faraks analysis. We couldn't do it without you. Discipline recommended for former assistant attorneys - Masslive 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. Kaczmarek, along with former assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and John Verner, all face possible sanctions. She started doing drugs almost as soon as she took the job at Amherst, but it was after years of negligence on her superiors part that her actions finally came to light. Since the takeover, the budget for all forensic labs across the state has been increased, by around twenty-five per cent. Shawn Musgrave is a reporter who was until recently based in Boston. State officials rushed to condemn her loudly and publicly. Approximately one year later, she pled guilty to tampering with evidence, unlawful possession, and stealing narcotics. The show also delves into the issues of the state in discovering and reporting on the extent of the cases that were affected by Faraks actions. In her initial police interview, given at her dining room table, Dookhan said she "would never falsify" results "because it's someone's life on the line." The staff in the new lab was also doubled, and the number of trainees was also increased. "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents," Ryan wrote to the attorney general's office. Biden Embraces the Fearmongering, Vows To Squash D.C.'s Mild Criminal Justice Reforms, The Flap Over Biden's Comment About 2 Fentanyl Deaths Obscures Prohibition's Role in Causing Them, Conservatives Turn Further Against WarExcept Maybe With Mexico. Defense attorneys had. Shortly into her role at Amherst, Farak decided to try liquid methamphetamine to ease her personal struggles. If chemists had to testify in person, Coakley warned melodramatically, misdemeanor drug prosecutions "would essentially grind to a halt. As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. In 2019, she was seen leaving the Springfield Federal Court but declined to comment on the status of the case. The drug lab technician was sent to prison for 18 months, but was released in 2015. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. Foster consulted Kaczmarek about the files contents, according to an During her trial, her defense lawyer Elaine Pourinski said that Farak wasnt taking drugs to party, but instead to control her depression. Shawn Musgrave Since her release, she has kept a low profile and managed to stay out of the public . The fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. Join us. In January 2014, she pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and drug possession. 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 . She is not active on any social media platform and has kept her distance from the press. When defense lawyers asked to see evidence for themselves, state prosecutors smeared them as pursuing a "fishing expedition.". Farak worked under the influence of drugs for nine years - from 2004 to 2013 - before she was caught. Even the master's degree on her rsum was fabricated. Sonja Farak Cracked Out - Rough Diplomacy 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. In Sonja Farak drug lab scandal, Mass - The Washington Post Dookhan had seeded public mistrust in the criminal justice system, which "now becomes an issue in every criminal trial for every defendant.". 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. 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. The new numbers appear in a report issued by a court-designated "Special Master." 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. Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education. 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. "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. The charges against Penate were dismissed after Farak's conviction. 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. 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 a crucial issue was not before the court. Its no big deal, 14-year-old Farak said to the Panama City News Herald. How to Fix A Drug Scandal takes a one-woman issue in a crumbling police drug lab and follows the way it blew up an entire legal system. Who Are Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan? How to Fix a Drug Scandal True Story He recommended she lose her law license for two years; the Office of Bar Counsel later argued Kaczmarek should be disbarred. When a Therapy Session starts, the software automatically creates a To-Do list item reminding users to create the relevant documentation. Episode 2. He also "No reasonable individual could have failed to appreciate the unlawfulness of [Kaczmarek's] actions in these circumstances," Robertson wrote in her ruling. She was released in 2015, as reported by Mass Live. Where is Sonja Farak Now? - The Cinemaholic Like Hinton, the Amherst lab had no cameras. Drug lab cases information | Mass.gov Farak admitted in testimony that she began using drugs almost as soon as she started working at the Massachusetts State Crime Lab in Amherst. 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. Kaczmarek wrote back. 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. She was ar-rested for tampering with evidence while abusing narcotics at work. 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. 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. When grand jury materials were eventually released to defense attorneys, then, they did not mention that these documents existed. 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. wrote to the Attorney Generals Office two days later. Who Is Sonja Farak From Netflix Docu-Series How To Fix A Drug Scandal GBH News brings you the stories, local voices, and big ideas that shape our world. In four 50-minute episodes, Netflix's latest shocker tells the story of Sonia Farak, a chemist who worked at a crime lab in Amherst, Massachusetts. A Compelling New Take on a Massachusetts Lab Scandal Tainting Thousands 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. Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak. February 2013 email, to which he attached the worksheets. Still, the state was acquiring evidence. In November 2013, Dookhan pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, and perjury.