They wrote that Lee, disabled by a stew of mental ailments, [spent] her hours surfing the Web in a haze.. When defense lawyers asked to see evidence for themselves, state prosecutors smeared them as pursuing a "fishing expedition.". "I was totally controlled by my addiction," Farak later testified. After her arrest, she received support from her parents, who showed up to her court appearances, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported. Kaczmarek, along with former assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and John Verner, all face possible sanctions. Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. The judge ordered prosecutors and defense attorneys to coordinate on identifying undisclosed emails related to documents seized from the disgraced state crime lab chemist. Her wrongdoings were exposed when unsealed cocaine and a crack pipe were found under her desk. 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. It features the true story of Sonja Farak, a former state drug lab chemist in Massachusetts who was arrested in 2013 for consuming the drugs she was supposed to test and tampering with the. Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. She started seeing a substance abuse therapist around this time. 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. In the aftermath, the court felt it necessary to make clear that "no prosecutorhas the authority to decline to disclose exculpatory information.". Episode 1. Judge Kinder ordered her to produce all potentially privileged documents for his review to determine whether they could be disclosed. State prosecutors gave Farak the immunity they had declined to grant two years earlier, then asked when she started analyzing samples while high. 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. In January 2014, she pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and drug possession. At least 11,000 cases have already been dismissed due to fallout from the scandal, with thousands more likely to come. In 2012, she began taking from co-workers' samples, forging intake forms and editing the lab database to cover her tracks. "No reasonable individual could have failed to appreciate the unlawfulness of [Kaczmarek's] actions in these circumstances," Robertson wrote in her ruling. In a letter filed with the Supreme Court, Julianne Nassif, a lab supervisor, wrote that Hinton had "appropriate quality control" measures. wrote to the Attorney Generals Office two days later. 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. After she was caught, Farak pleaded guilty to stealing drugs from the lab and was sentenced to prison time of 18 months. 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. Still, the state was acquiring evidence. Farak. Her job consisted of testing drugs that have. 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. After contemplating another suicide, she settled on drugs, and the fact that she had such easy access to it at her workplace made it easier for her to get lost in that world. 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. 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. Sonja Farak was a chemist at a state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 2005 to 2013. Kaczmarek had obtained the evidence at issue while she was prosecuting Farak on state charges of tampering with evidence and drug possession. 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. noted the mental health worksheets found in Faraks car, which had not been released. 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. When the Farak scandal erupted, that misconduct came into view. Shawn Musgrave Without access to the diaries, the Springfield judge in 2013 found that Farak had starting stealing from samples in summer 2012. 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. The story of the intertwining Farak and Penate evidence began in January 2013, when state police arrested Farak and searched her car. As the state's top court put it, the criminal investigation into Farak was "cursory at best.". Meier put the number at 40,323 defendants, though some have called that an overestimate. Joseph . A status hearing on Penate's suit, which was filed in 2017, is scheduled for July. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility at GBH, Transparency in Coverage Cost-Sharing Disclosures. The next month, Ryan asked again. Foster's first stepper ethical obligations and office protocolshould have been to look through the evidence to see what had already been handed over. At some point, the attorney general's office stopped chasing leads entirely. 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. As Kaczmarek herself later observed, Farak essentially had "a drugstore at her disposal" from her first day at the Amherst lab. After serving just a year of her 18 month sentence, Farak was released from prison in 2015. His report deemed Dookhan the "sole bad actor" at the lab, a finding that remains disputed in some circles. 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. . 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. Two detectives found Farak at a courthouse waiting to testify on an unrelated matter. According to a newspaper article from 1992, she was the first female in Rhode Island to be on a high school football team. I felt euphoric, Kogan wrote of Farak. (Netflix) A former state chemist, Sonja Farak, made headlines in 2013 when she was arrested for stealing and using drugs from a laboratory. This very well could have been the end of the investigative trail but for a few stubborn defense lawyers, who appealed the ruling. "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. Defense lawyers doubled down on challenges to every case she might have taintednot just her own, which district attorneys ultimately agreed to dismiss, but also her co-workers', based on Farak's admission that she stole from other chemists' samples. At the time of her arrest, she had resided in 37 Laurel Park in Northampton. The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. compelled release of additional drug treatment records, which indicated Farak used a variety of drugs that she stole from the lab for years. Among other items, Kaczmarek "That was one of the lines I had thought I would never cross: I wouldn't tamper with evidence, I wouldn't smoke crack, and then I wouldn't touch other people's work," Farak said. In fall 2013, a Springfield, Massachusetts, judge convened hearings with the explicit aim of establishing "the timing and scope" of Farak's "alleged criminal conduct.". He didn't buy her quibbling that there's a difference between an explicit lie and obfuscation by grammar. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the Amherst lab in 2004. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the lab. How to Fix a Drug Scandal is an American true crime documentary miniseries that was released on Netflix on April 1, 2020. Yet 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. Deval Patrick's office didn't learn about the protocol breach until December 2011. Because state prosecutors hid Farak's substance abuse diaries, it took far too long for the full timeline of her crimes to become public. The civil lawsuit was one of the last tied to prosecutors' disputed handling of the case against disgraced ex-chemist Sonja Farak, who was convicted in 2014 of ingesting drug samples she was. Kaczmarek argued the findings are subject to appeal. After high school, Sonja went on to major in biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts. Out of "an abundance of caution," Kaczmarek didn't present them to the grand jury that was convened to determine whether to indict Farak. 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. Farak was released from prison in 2015 and has kept a low profile since. another filing. Before her sentencing, Farak failed a drug test while out on bail, according to Mass Live. But a crucial issue was not before the court. The information showed that Farak sought therapy for drug addiction and that her misconduct had been ongoing for years. Another worksheet had the month and weekdays for December 2011, which police easily could have determined by cross-referencing holidays or looking up a New England Patriots game mentioned in one entry. On another worksheet chronicling her struggle not to use, she described 12 of the next 13 samples assigned to her for testing as "urge-ful.". 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. The staff in the new lab was also doubled, and the number of trainees was also increased. Lets find out. "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents, Ryan 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. Like Hinton, the Amherst lab had no cameras. 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. Foster Relying on an investigation conducted by state police, the judges 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. The state and attorneys for some of the defendants agreed to a $14 million settlement to reimburse 31,000 defendants for post conviction-related costs, such as probation and parole fees, drug analysis and GPS monitoring. The cocaine, found in an unsealed, completed drug-testing kit, tested negativemeaning Farak had seemingly replaced the formerly "positive" drugs with falsified substances. Where Is Sonja Farak Now? The new numbers appear in a report issued by a court-designated "Special Master." Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015. That motion was denied, and the notice letters will explain Farak's tampering without any mention of prosecutorial misconduct. Shortly into her role at Amherst, Farak decided to try liquid methamphetamine to ease her personal struggles. To multiple courts' amazement, her incessant drug use never caught the attention of her co-workers. Since the takeover, the budget for all forensic labs across the state has been increased, by around twenty-five per cent. Instead, she submitted an intentionally vague letter to the judge claiming defense attorneys already had everything. Netflix released a new docu-series called "How to Fix a Drug Scandal." Martha Coakley, then attorney general for the state, argued in Melendez-Diaz that a chemist's certificate contains only "neutral, objective facts." Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015 Contributed by Shawn Musgrave (Musgrave Investigations) p. 1. The former judges and the state police officers who helped them conducted a thorough review, said Emalie Gainey, spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey. Regarding the cases that she had handled, the Massachusetts courts threw out every case in the Amherst lab during her tenure. "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. 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. "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 hotline is open Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. So, in a way, it is not from her that the queue of the blame should begin; it should be from the lab and the authorities themselves. But unlike with Dookhan, there were no independent investigations of Farak or the Amherst lab. "A forensic analyst responding to a request from a law enforcement official may feel pressureor have an incentiveto alter the evidence in a manner favorable to the prosecution.". 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. This threw every sample she had ever tested into question. 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. She was released in 2015, as reported by Mass Live. The attorney general's representative at these hearings was Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster, a recent hire. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. 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." Farak was arrested the next day, and the attorney general's office assigned the case to Anne Kaczmarek. Her reporting focuses on mental health, criminal justice and education. This is the story of Farak's drug-induced wrongdoings, and it's the. At the time of Penates trial, the state Attorney Generals Office contended Faraks misdeeds dated back only as far as 2012. Though. Sonja Farak, who worked as a chemist at the Amherst drug lab since 2004, was arrested in January 2013 after one of her co-workers noticed samples were missing from evidence. 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." Foster replied that because the investigation against Farak was ongoing, she couldnt let him see it. She even made her own crack in the lab. Prosecutors have an obligation to give the defense exculpatory evidence including anything that could weaken evidence against defendants. But whether anyone investigated her conduct during a brief stint working at the state's Boston drug lab is at . She was sentenced to 18 months in jail plus five years of probation. 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.". She grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. Perhaps, as criminal justice scandals inevitably emerge, we need to get more independent eyes on the evidence from the start. 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. 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.