Widening scandal at state drug lab in Mass. exposes opportunities for The court decided to uphold a ruling dismissing charges against the defendant, a juvenile at the time of the alleged offense identified only as Washington W. The justices didnt name his prosecutor, David Omiunu, who was identified by The Eye from other court records. You can try, Suspensions and a reprimand proposed for prosecutors admonished in drug lab scandal. The premise revolves around documentary filmmaker Erin Lee Carr following the effects of crime drug lab chemists Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan and their tampering with evidence and its aftereffects.. Dookhan was accused of forging reports and tampering with samples to . 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. Sonja Farak exposed - full extent of her drug use and where she is now Massachusetts DA seeks to vacate thousands of drug convictions - CNN According to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Farak graduated with awards and distinctions. 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. Would love your thoughts, please comment. Scalia may as well have been describing Dookhan. 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. The surveillance of the chemists as well as the standards and the confiscated drugs has also been increased considerably. 1. 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 evidence to cover up her tracks. Why Won't Maryland Sell Me a Goddamn Beer? Farak wasn't the first Massachusetts chemist to tamper with drug evidence. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. email highlighted in the Velis-Merrigan report. 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. 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. During her trial, her defense lawyer Elaine Pourinski said that Farak wasnt taking drugs to party, but instead to control her depression. Massachusetts Chemist Prosecution Leads to Falling Consumer Confidence State prosecutors hadnt provided this evidence to other district attorneys offices contending with the Farak fallout, either. 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. The governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. TherapyNotes. 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. Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); NEXT: Zoning Makes the Green New Deal Impossible. She said, It was about coping; it certainly wasnt about having fun; I dont think shes had fun in quite a while.. Foster protested that portions of the evidentiary file in question might be privileged or not subject to disclosure. ordered a report on the history of her illicit behavior. One reason that didn't happen, he says: "the determination Coakley and her team made the morning after Farak's arrest that her misconduct did not affect the due process rights of any Farak defendants." | Defense attorneys had. 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. When the Farak scandal erupted, that misconduct came into view. Several defense attorneys who called for the Velis-Merrigan investigation say the former judges and their state police investigators got it wrong. Tens of thousands of criminal drug cases were dismissed as a result of misconduct by Dookhan and Farak. 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 drug lab technician was sent to prison for 18 months, but was released in 2015. Disgraced drug lab chemist Sonja Farak emerges as her own attorney as defendant in $5.7 million federal lawsuit. Even before her arrest, the Department of Public Health had launched an internal inquiry into how such misconduct had gone undetected for such a long time. The place was closed as soon as Faraks crimes came to light. Farak signed 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. A year later, in October 2014, prosecutors relented, granting access to the full evidence in Farak's case to attorney Luke Ryan. Chemist Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to "tampering with evidence" back in 2014 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. The number is 888-999-2881. There is nothing to indicate that the allegations against Farak date back to the time she tested the drugs in Penates case. 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. This not only led to people getting a reprieve from prison but also filing their own lawsuits against the injustice they had to suffer. 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. He recommended she lose her law license for two years; the Office of Bar Counsel later argued Kaczmarek should be disbarred. Foster and another assistant attorney general assented to that motion. food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. Farak admitted to being on a list of drugs while working between 2004 and her 2013 arrest. Verner's "marching orders," he later testified, were to prosecute Farak with "what was in front of us, the car, things that were readily apparent. 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. NORTHAMPTON Sonja J. Farak told a nurse at the Western Massachusetts 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. "The gravity of the present case cannot be overstated," Kaczmarek wrote in her memo recommending a prison sentence of five to seven years. Netflix's How to Fix a Drug Scandal: What Happened To Sonja Farak 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." This past Tuesday, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court filed a report saying that more than 24,000 convictions in 16,449 cases have been dismissed as a result of foul play by a former state drug lab chemist. For years, Sonja Farak was addicted to cocaine, methamphetamine, and amphetamines, the kind of drugs usually bought from street dealers in covert transactions that carry the constant risk of arrest. Did Falsified Drug Tests Lead to Wrongful Convictions? - Rolling Stone Farak as a young. Farak. 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. 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. 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. In an August 2013 email, Ryan asked Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster to review evidence taken from Farak. Prosecutors have an obligation to give the defense exculpatory evidence including anything that could weaken evidence against defendants. But a crucial issue was not before the court. From 2004 to 2013, Farak took advantage of . Her access to evidence was not restricted, and she continued testifying in court. 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. 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. She was also testifying in court while high. Privacy Policy | Kaczmarek was now juggling two scandals on opposite sides of the state. Without even interviewing Foster, they determined there was "no evidence" of obstruction of justice by her, by Kaczmarek, or by any state prosecutor. After she was caught, Farak pleaded guilty to stealing drugs from the lab and was sentenced to prison time of 18 months. 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. As he leafed through three boxes of evidence, he found the substance abuse worksheets and diaries. Sonja Farak: 35,000 criminal cases were dismissed because this - MEAWW As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . Read More: Where is Sonja Farak Sister Now? Magistrate Judge Robertson denied a request in Penate's lawsuit that Kaczmarek be prohibited from contesting the special hearing officer's findings. 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. It didnt matter whether or not she was the one who did the testing or some other chemist. A hearing on their motions is scheduled next month. 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. 1. 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 was an astoundingly light touch for the second state chemist arrested in six months. Penate argued the court should follow those findings. 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 . Foster's first stepper ethical obligations and office protocolshould have been to look through the evidence to see what had already been handed over. Massachusetts drug lab scandal tied to Sonja Farak and Hinton Lab Exhausted from the ongoing scandal in Boston, state officials were desperate for damage control.