In a letter filed with the Supreme Court, Julianne Nassif, a lab supervisor, wrote that Hinton had "appropriate quality control" measures. 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. Two weeks after Ryans discovery, the Attorney Generals Office Before her sentencing, Farak failed a drug test while out on bail, according to Mass Live. It didnt matter whether or not she was the one who did the testing or some other chemist. A status hearing on Penate's suit, which was filed in 2017, is scheduled for July. Patrick appointed the state inspector general to look into it. concluded she was usually high while working in the lab for more than eight years before her arrest in January 2013 and started stealing samples seven years ago. They pulled her aside as she walked back to the courthouse from her car, where she had smoked "a fair amount of crack" during her lunch break. At the time of her arrest, she had resided in 37 Laurel Park in Northampton. The civil lawsuit was one of the last tied to prosecutors' disputedhandling of the case against disgraced ex-chemist Sonja Farak, who was convicted in 2014 of ingesting drug samples she was supposed to test at the Amherst state drug lab. Dookhan was now spending less time at her lab bench and more time testifying in court about her results. Read More: Where is Sonja Farak Sister Now? Because she did so, Plaintiff served more than five years in a state prison.". Deval Patrick's office didn't learn about the protocol breach until December 2011. The responsibility of the mess that she created should also rest upon the shoulders of her workplace that allowed her the opportunity to indulge so freely in drugs in the first place. "We shouldn't be in the position of having to be saying, 'Don't close your eyes to the duration and scope of misconduct that may affect a whole lot of cases,'" the exasperated Massachusetts chief justice told prosecutors during oral arguments. Shown results suggesting otherwise, she copped to contaminating samples "a few times" during the previous "two to three years.". His is one of what lawyers say could be thousands of convictions questioned in the wake of the Farak scandal. It declined Farak's offer of a detailed confession in exchange for leniency, nixing the offer without even negotiating terms. What Did Sonja Farak Do, Exactly? At this point, Farakunlike Dookhandidn't admit anything. She said, It was about coping; it certainly wasnt about having fun; I dont think shes had fun in quite a while.. Farak was released from prison in 2015 and has kept a low profile since. Looking back, it seems that Massachusetts law enforcement officials, reeling from the Dookhan case, simply felt they couldn't weather another full-fledged forensics scandal. The twin Massachusetts drug lab scandals are unprecedented in the sheer number of cases thrown out because of forensic misconduct. Report shows more than 24k wrongful convictions dismissed in drug lab Penate alleged Kaczmarek's actions violated his "Brady rights," which require prosecutors to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to defense counsel. 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. 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. 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.". Nassif put Dookhan on desk duty but allowed her to finish testing cases already on her plate, including some of the samples she had taken from the locker. "I remember actually sitting on the stand and looking at it," Farak said of her first time swiping from evidence in a trafficking case, "knowing that I had analyzed the sample and that I had then tampered with it.". 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. The state's top court took an even harsher view, ruling in October 2018 that the attorney general's office as an institution was responsible for the prosecutorial misconduct of its former employees. "Annie Dookhan's alleged actions corrupted the integrity of the criminal justice system, and there are many victims as a result of this," Coakley said at a press conference. Sgt. 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 . Heres what you need to know about Sonja Farak: Farak was born on January 13, 1978, in Rhode Island to Stanley and Linda Farak. In 2019, the chemist was spotted at federal court in Springfield, MA , attending a civil case. Where Is Sonja Farak Now? The surveillance of the chemists as well as the standards and the confiscated drugs has also been increased considerably. How to Fix a Drug Scandal: behind a staggering Netflix crime docuseries Earlier that day, a chemist at the Amherst drug lab had tracked two samples that were missing from the evidence locker to Sonja Farak's bench. The cocaine, found in an unsealed, completed drug-testing kit, tested negativemeaning Farak had seemingly replaced the formerly "positive" drugs with falsified substances. motion with Hampden Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Kinder to see the evidence for himself. 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. 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. There is nothing to indicate that the allegations against Farak date back to the time she tested the drugs in Penates case. Widening scandal at state drug lab in Mass. exposes opportunities for Farak was getting high off the confiscated drugs police sent her way before replacing the evidence with fake drugs. Accessibility | 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. After serving just a year of her 18 month sentence, Farak was released from prison in 2015. A judge sentenced Dookhan to three years in prison; she was granted parole in April 2016. Thus, only defendants whose evidence she tested in the six-month window before her arrest could challenge their cases. 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. She couldn't be sure which cases these were, Dookhan told investigators. After serving for 13 months, she was released on parole in 2015. (Featured Image Credit: Mass Live). 3.3.2023 5:45 PM, Jacob Sullum 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. 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. As a teenager, she had attempted suicide. In January 2014, she pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and drug possession. Sonja Farak was a chemist for a state crime lab in Massachusetts. On top of that, it was also ensured that no analyst would ever work without supervision. Together, we can create a more connected and informed world. Former chemist Annie Dookhan was convicted in 2013 on charges of improperly testing drug evidence at a drug lab in Boston. Drug lab cases information | Mass.gov February 2013 email, to which he attached the worksheets. A year later, in October 2014, prosecutors relented, granting access to the full evidence in Farak's case to attorney Luke Ryan. Where is Sonja Farak from How To Fix A Drug Scandal now? She started smoking crack cocaine in 2011 and was soon using it 10 to 12 times a day. 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.". That motion was denied, and the notice letters will explain Farak's tampering without any mention of prosecutorial misconduct. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015 Contributed by Shawn Musgrave (Musgrave Investigations) p. 1. She was sentenced to 18 months in jail plus five years of probation. 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. Several defense attorneys who called for the Velis-Merrigan investigation say the former judges and their state police investigators got it wrong. YouTube 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 trabaj en el laboratorio Amherst desde el verano de 2004 y poco despus comenz a tomar las drogas del laboratorio. Judge dismisses 'qualified immunity' claim in suit against ex - WBUR She started working shortly after for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health in July 2003 until July 2012, and from July 2012 until January 2013 for the Massachusetts State Police when the lab fell under their jurisdiction. Sonja Farak had admitted to stealing and using drugs from the drug lab where she worked as a chemist for around 9 years. Stream GBH's Award-Winning Content For Parents And Children. Watch How to Fix a Drug Scandal | Netflix Official Site They never searched Farak's computer or her home. Like Hinton, the Amherst lab had no cameras. As extensively detailed in How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Farak was arrested on January 19, 2013. 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. 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. A second unsealed report into allegations of wrongdoing by police and prosecutors who handled the Farak evidence, overseen by retired state judges Peter Velis and Thomas Merrigan, drew less attention. Where Are How to Fix a Drug Scandal's Sonja Farak and Kris - Decider Compromised drug samples often fit the definition. 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. Lost in the high drama of determining which individual prosecutors hid evidence was a more basic question: In scandals like these, why are decisions about evidence left to prosecutors at all? The Attorney Generals Office, Velis and Merrigan and the state police declined to answer questions about the handling of the Farak evidence. Farak admitted to being on a list of drugs while working between 2004 and her 2013 arrest. TherapyNotes. 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. She married Lee after starting her job, but their marriage was rocky. 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. In a 61 ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court in 2017, the defense bar, led by public defenders and the Massachusetts branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), won the dismissal of almost every conviction based on Dookhan's analysismore than 36,000 cases in all. Instead, she submitted an intentionally vague letter to the judge claiming defense attorneys already had everything. Dookhan was sentenced to prison in 2013. The disgraced chemist was sentenced to less than two years behind bars in 2014, following her guilty pleas for stealing cocaine from the lab. Who Is Luke Ryan From Netflix's 'How To Fix A Drug Scandal'? | True Who Are Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan? How to Fix a Drug Scandal True Story This is the story of Farak's drug-induced wrongdoings, and it's the story of the Massachusetts Attorney General's office apparently turning a blind eye on those wrongfully convicted because of Farak's mistakes. 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.
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