Farak saw Kogan in 2009 and 2010, and her therapist wrote: She obtains the drugs from her job at the state drug lab, by taking portions of samples that have come in to be tested., Kogan also wrote that Farak told her she had taken methamphetamines at another lab in an old job, but she didnt get much from it. Kogan wrote that after moving to western [Massachusetts] for her job at the state drug lab, [Farak] tried it again and really liked it. "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. Finding that there did not appear to be enough slides in Dookhan's discard pile to match her numbers, the colleague brought his concerns to an outside attorney, who advised he should be careful making "accusations about a young woman's career," he later told state police. Investigators found that Sonja Farak tested drug samples and testified in court while under the influence of methamphetamines, ketamine, cocaine, LSD and other drugs between 2005 and 2013. Joseph Ballou, lead investigator for the state police, called them the most important documents from the car. 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." This not only led to people getting a reprieve from prison but also filing their own lawsuits against the injustice they had to suffer. Where is Sonja now? In court, she added that there was "no smoking gun" in the evidence. Both have since left the attorney general's office for other government positions. answered that the state considered the evidence irrelevant to any case other than Faraks.. She continued to experience suicidal thoughts, but instead of going through with those thoughts, she started taking the drugs that she would be testing at work. 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. Her wrongdoings were exposed when unsealed cocaine and a crack pipe were found under her desk. 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. Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal Story: 5 Fast Facts. But in a The place was closed as soon as Faraks crimes came to light. 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. She recovered, made it through college and got a job as a chemist at the Amherst Crime Lab, where she tested confiscated drugs. Yet Dookhan's brazen crimes went undetected for ages. 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.". For people with disabilities needing assistance with the Public Files, contact Glenn Heath at 617-300-3268. As . At the time of her arrest, she had resided in 37 Laurel Park in Northampton. This immediately provoked questions about the thousands of cases in which her findings had contributed to the imprisonment of an individual. As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . "Going to use phentermine," she wrote on another, "but when I went to take it, I saw how little (v. little) there is left = ended up not using. 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. 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! ", But another co-worker was suspicious, particularly since he "never saw Dookhan in front of a microscope.". Sonja Farak was a chemist for a state crime lab in Massachusetts. Farak received a sentence of 18 months in jail and 5 years of probation. . They were all rendered unacceptable. Gov. Several defense attorneys who called for the Velis-Merrigan investigation say the former judges and their state police investigators got it wrong. 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. Stream GBH's Award-Winning Content For Parents And Children. Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. Foster She was released in 2015, as reported by Mass Live. 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. While Dookhan had tampered with evidence and indulged in dry-labbing, Farak stole from her workplace. "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.". 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. Penate argued the court should follow those findings. He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." At least 11,000 cases have already been dismissed due to fallout from the scandal, with thousands more likely to come. "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. Her notes record on-the-job drug use ranging from small nips of the lab's baseline. 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. It's not as bad as Dookhan, they asserted and implied over and over. El 6 de enero de 2014, Farak se declar culpable de los cargos en su contra. Who is Sonja Farak, the former state drug lab chemist featured in the show? 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 . (Featured Image Credit: Mass Live). ", Prosecutors maintained that Faraks rogue behavior spanned just a few months. Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak. A federal judge has rejected claims from an embattled former state prosecutor that she is protected from liability in the fallout over a Massachusetts drug lab scandal. 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. In a March 2013 Because she did so, Plaintiff served more than five years in a state prison.". Because the attorney general had "portrayed Farak as a dedicated public servant who was apprehended immediately after crossing the line, there was also no reasonto waste resources engaging in any additional introspection.". Kaczmarek had obtained the evidence at issue while she was prosecuting Farak on state charges of tampering with evidence and drug possession. Kaczmarek argued the findings are subject to appeal. If Farak found a substance was a true drug, the person it was confiscated from could be convicted of a substance-related crime. She grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. Listen Live: Classic and Contemporary Celtic, Listen Live: Cape, Coast and Islands NPR Station, Boston nonprofit Street2Ivy is producing this generation's entrepreneurs. 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.". memo to Judge Kinder the next week, Foster said she reviewed the file, and said every document in it had already been disclosed. She first worked at the Hinton State Laboratory in Jamaica Plain for a year as a bacteriologist working on HIV tests before she transferred to the Amherst Lab for drug analysis. Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education. A scandal erupts, raising questions for the thousands of defendants in her cases. But why were a small handful of prosecutors allowed total control over evidence about one of the worst criminal justice failures in recent memory? With the Dookhan case so fresh, reporters immediately labeled Farak "the second chemist. Maybe fatigue made them sloppy, or perhaps they actively chose to look the other way as evidence piled up about the enormity of Farak's crimes. 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 . She even made her own crack in the lab. "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.". Instead, Coakley's office served as gatekeeper to evidence that could have untangled the scandal and freed thousands of people from prison and jail years earlier, or at least wiped their improper convictions off the books. 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. Joseph . You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. 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. TherapyNotes is a complete practice management system with everything you need to manage patient records, schedule appointments, meet with patients remotely, create rich documentation, and bill insurance, right at your fingertips. Kaczmarek also oversaw the prosecution for the attorney general's office in that case. Obviously, after a blunder of such scale, no one would want their samples checked from the same lab. In worksheet notes dated Thursday, Dec. 22, Farak 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. A. She was ar-rested for tampering with evidence while abusing narcotics at work. Kaczmarek quoted the worksheets in a memo to her supervisor, Verner, and others, summarizing that they revealed Farak's "struggle with substance abuse." 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. 3.3.2023 4:50 PM, 2022 Reason Foundation | Many more are likely to follow, with the total expected to exceed 50,000. 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. Instead, she submitted an intentionally vague letter to the judge claiming defense attorneys already had everything. And when the tests she did run came back negative, Dookhan added controlled substances to the vials. He was floored when he found the worksheets. 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. She soon crossed all these lines. The defense bar also demanded answers on how such crucial evidence stayed buried for so long. After she was caught, Farak pleaded guilty to stealing drugs from the lab and was sentenced to prison time of 18 months. The number is 888-999-2881. Despite clear indications that Farak used a variety of narcoticsher worksheets mentioned phentermine, and that vial of powdered oxycodone-acetaminophen had been found at her benchKaczmarek also proceeded as if crack cocaine were Farak's sole drug. Such strong claims were too hasty at best, since investigators had not yet finished basic searches; three days later, police executed a warrant for a duffel bag they found stuffed behind Farak's desk. Where Is Sonja Farak Now? READ NEXT: Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal Story: 5 Fast Facts, Sonja Farak: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know, Please review our privacy policy here: https://heavy.com/privacy-policy/, Copyright 2023 Heavy, Inc. All rights reserved. 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. Join us. Sonja Farak was a chemist at a state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 2005 to 2013. Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal tells the story of two women whose actions brought to light the negligence of the system that is supposed to deliver justice to everyone. 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. Emma Camp shipped nearly 300 pages of previously undisclosed materials to local prosecutors around the state. State prosecutors gave Farak the immunity they had declined to grant two years earlier, then asked when she started analyzing samples while high. wrote she "tried to resist using @ work, but ended up failing." Per her own court testimony, as shown in the docu-series, Farak started working at a state drug lab in Amherst in 2004.