The attorney general's officeKaczmarek or her supervisorscould have asked a judge to determine whether the worksheets were actually privileged, as Kaczmarek later acknowledged. Prosecutors have an obligation to give the defense exculpatory evidence including anything that could weaken evidence against defendants. 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. compelled release of additional drug treatment records, which indicated Farak used a variety of drugs that she stole from the lab for years. | If they'd kept digging, defendants might still have learned the crucial facts. A. It took another three years for the truth to emerge. 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. The twin Massachusetts drug lab scandals are unprecedented in the sheer number of cases thrown out because of forensic misconduct. That motion was denied, and the notice letters will explain Farak's tampering without any mention of prosecutorial misconduct. Farak admitted to being on a list of drugs while working between 2004 and her 2013 arrest. Farak as a young. And when the tests she did run came back negative, Dookhan added controlled substances to the vials. In January 2014, she pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and drug possession. The Netflix docuseries ends by acknowledging that Farak received an 18-month sentence, and that defense attorney Luke Ryan was able . 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. The last contact information provided by her, in response to Penates allegations, placed her residence in Hatfield, Massachusetts. Faraks wife had her own mental health problems, and according to Rolling Stone, Farak would have conflict with her wife every night at home. Due to the conviction, prosecutors were forced to dismiss more than . 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. She played as the starting guard for Portsmouth High Schools freshman team. 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. Kaczmarek, along with former assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and John Verner, all face possible sanctions. 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.". Netflixs How to Fix a Drug Scandal Story: 5 Fast Facts. Sonja Farak was a chemist for a state crime lab in Massachusetts. Joseph . Below is an outline of her charges. . She had never quashed a subpoena before, but supervisors told her to fend off motions about Farak. How to Fix a Drug Scandal: With Shannon O'Neill, Karl Kenzler, Paul Solotaroff, Scott Allen. Shawn Musgrave The scandal led. A hearing on their motions is scheduled next month. TherapyNotes. His is one of what lawyers say could be thousands of convictions questioned in the wake of the Farak scandal. As . The former judges and the state police officers who helped them conducted a thorough review, said Emalie Gainey, spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey. 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 Today: Where Is She Now? | Heavy.com "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.". Dookhan's output remained implausibly high even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts (2009) that defendants were entitled to cross-examine forensic chemists about their analysis. another filing. In 2017, a different judge ruled that Foster's actions constituted a "fraud upon the court," calling the letter "deliberately misleading." Patrick said "the most important take-home" was that "no individual's due process rights were compromised.". You can check your records electronically by following this link: https://icori.chs.state.ma.us. memo to Judge Kinder the next week, Foster said she reviewed the file, and said every document in it had already been disclosed. They tend to be more freeform notes about the session and your impressions of the client's statements and demeanour. Fue arrestada el 19 de enero de 2013. How to Fix a Drug Scandal: behind a staggering Netflix crime docuseries The Dookhan prosecution was barely underway, a grand jury having returned indictments a few weeks earlier. In 2014, former Amherst drug lab chemist Sonja Farak was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison after it was discovered that she stole and used drugs that she was entrusted to test. This is merely a fishing expedition, Foster wrote in Even the master's degree on her rsum was fabricated. Judge dismisses 'qualified immunity' claim in suit against ex - WBUR 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. Because she did so, Plaintiff served more than five years in a state prison.". After high school, Sonja went on to major in biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts. The justices ordered Healey's department to cover all costs of notifying all defendants whose cases were dismissed. It had no surveillance cameras, laughable security on evidence safes, and "laissez faire" management, which the state inspector general determined was the "most glaring factor that led to the Dookhan crisis. In fall 2012, just five months before her arrest, Annie Dookhan confessed to faking analyses and altering samples in the Boston testing facility where she worked. Sonja Farak exposed - full extent of her drug use and where she is now 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. Farak worked under the influence of drugs for nine years - from 2004 to 2013 - before she was caught. It declined Farak's offer of a detailed confession in exchange for leniency, nixing the offer without even negotiating terms. 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. 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. Sonja Farak Cracked Out - Rough Diplomacy Follow us so you don't miss a thing! State chemist may have affected more drug cases than previously known As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . Former State Chemist High At Work For Nearly 8 Years, Documents Say Most important, they found seven worksheets from Farak's substance abuse therapy. shipped nearly 300 pages of previously undisclosed materials to local prosecutors around the state. Powered by. In the series, it's explained that Farak loved the energy the meth gave her. Four months after Ryan found the worksheets, Judge Kinder Many more are likely to follow, with the total expected to exceed 50,000. 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. Having barely investigated her, prosecutors indicted Farak only for the samples in her possession the day she was caught. Maybe it's not a matter of checklists or reminders that prosecutors have to keep their eyes open for improprieties. For people with disabilities needing assistance with the Public Files, contact Glenn Heath at 617-300-3268. His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. She was sentenced in 2014 to 18 months in prison and 5 years of probation. Netflix's How to Fix a Drug Scandal: A staggering true story of - Vox She was trying to suppress mental health issues, depression in specific, and she attempted to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. 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. Rollins said it covers "a period of time in which either now disgraced chemist Annie Dookhan, or another convicted chemist Sonja Farak ," worked there. After the Supreme Court's decision, a skeptical colleague started tracking how many microscope slides Dookhan used to test samples for cocaine. "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents," Ryan wrote to the attorney general's office. 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. Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak. Tens of thousands of criminal drug cases were dismissed as a result of misconduct by Dookhan and Farak. The surveillance of the chemists as well as the standards and the confiscated drugs has also been increased considerably. Massachusetts Chemist Prosecution Leads to Falling Consumer Confidence After serving for 13 months, she was released on parole in 2015. How to Fix a Drug Scandal (TV Mini Series 2020) - IMDb The Amherst lab had called state police when the two missing samples were noticed in 2013. A local prosecutor also asked Ballou to look into a case Farak had tested as far back as 2005. Cleverly omitting pronouns, she wrote that "after reviewing" the file, "every documenthas been disclosed." 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. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015. Like Hinton, the Amherst lab had no cameras. His report deemed Dookhan the "sole bad actor" at the lab, a finding that remains disputed in some circles. 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. "Please don't let this get more complicated than we thought," Kaczmarek replied when Ballou, the lead investigator, flagged irregularities in Farak's analysis in a case featuring pain pills. Support GBH. 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. 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. Judge Kinder ordered her to produce all potentially privileged documents for his review to determine whether they could be disclosed. Sonja Farak: Defendant Rafael Rodriguez died of drug overdose - MEAWW