Who is Sonja Farak, the former state drug lab chemist featured in the show? If Farak found a substance was a true drug, the person it was confiscated from could be convicted of a substance-related crime. Penate is seeking a new trial, contending the conviction should be reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct and evidence tainted by Farak. Having barely investigated her, prosecutors indicted Farak only for the samples in her possession the day she was caught. This not only led to people getting a reprieve from prison but also filing their own lawsuits against the injustice they had to suffer. Kaczmarek is one of three former prosecutors whose role in the prosecution of Farak later became the focus of several lawsuits and disciplinary hearings. "he didn't request a warrant. Privacy Policy | "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. 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. But absent evidence of aggravating misconduct by prosecutors or cops, the majority ruled, Dookhan's tampering alone didn't justify a blanket dismissal of every case she had touched. Between the two women, 47,000 drug convictions and guilty pleas have been dismissed in the last two years, many for misdemeanor possession. "Thousands of defendants were kept in the dark for far too long about the government misconduct in their cases," the ACLU and the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the state's public defense agency, wrote in a motion. She's no longer in prison, as Farak has served her sentence. From the March 2019 issue, "Tried to resist using @ work, but ended up failing," the forensic chemist scribbled on a diary worksheet she kept as part of her substance abuse therapy. According to a newspaper article from 1992, she was the first female in Rhode Island to be on a high school football team. 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. Given the account that Farak was a law-abiding citizen, it is questioned as to how an Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to stealing samples of drugs from an Amherst drug lab. 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.". A status hearing on Penate's suit, which was filed in 2017, is scheduled for July. Farak received a sentence of 18 months in jail and 5 years of probation. She started smoking crack cocaine in 2011 and was soon using it 10 to 12 times a day. Listen Live: Classic and Contemporary Celtic, Listen Live: Cape, Coast and Islands NPR Station, Boston nonprofit Street2Ivy is producing this generation's entrepreneurs. Join us. After high school, Sonja went on to major in biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts. 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. The governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. 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. She was trying to suppress mental health issues, depression in specific, and she attempted to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. Officials recognized the worksheets for what they were: near-indisputable confessions. At the time of Penates trial, the state Attorney Generals Office contended Faraks misdeeds dated back only as far as 2012. Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. When the Farak scandal erupted, that misconduct came into view. Exhausted from the ongoing scandal in Boston, state officials were desperate for damage control. The defense bar also demanded answers on how such crucial evidence stayed buried for so long. As Kaczmarek herself later observed, Farak essentially had "a drugstore at her disposal" from her first day at the Amherst lab. The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. Many more are likely to follow, with the total expected to exceed 50,000. Farak had started taking drugs on the job within months of joining the Amherst lab in 2004. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, Sonja Farak is the subject of Netflix's "How To Fix a Drug Scandal. ", Everyone Practices Cancel Culture | Opinion, Deplatforming Free Speech is Dangerous | Opinion. 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." Episode 1. memo, Kaczmarek told her supervisors that "Farak's admissions on her 'emotional worksheets' recovered from her car detail her struggle with substance abuse. "Because on almost a daily basis Farak abused narcoticsthere is no assurance that she was able to perform chemical analysis correctly," the judge found. She grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. 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." another filing. "First, of course, are the defendants, who when charged in the criminal justice system have the right to expect that they will be given due process and there will be fair and accurate information used in any prosecution against them." She recovered, made it through college and got a job as a chemist at the Amherst Crime Lab, where she tested confiscated drugs. Over the next four years, Farak consumed nearly all of it. As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . She soon crossed all these lines. Damning evidence reveals drug lab chemist Sonja Farak's addictions. Sonja Farak stole, ingested or manufactured drugs almost every day for eight years while working as a chemist at a state lab in Amherst, Massachusetts. 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. Defense attorneys had. The report After the Supreme Court's decision, a skeptical colleague started tracking how many microscope slides Dookhan used to test samples for cocaine. Because she did so, Plaintiff served more than five years in a state prison.". The next month, Ryan asked again. A judge sentenced Dookhan to three years in prison; she was granted parole in April 2016. 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. Netflix released a new docu-series called "How to Fix a Drug Scandal." That settlement awaits approval by a judge. Where Is Sonja Farak Now? Regarding the cases that she had handled, the Massachusetts courts threw out every case in the Amherst lab during her tenure. This article originally appeared in print under the headline "The Chemists and the Cover-Up". Kaczmarek had obtained the evidence at issue while she was prosecuting Farak on state charges of tampering with evidence and drug possession. Between 2005 and 2013, Sonja Farak was performing laboratory tests at a state drug lab in Amherst while under the influence of narcotics. Powered by. 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. In December 2011, after police in Springfield, Mass., had arrested Renaldo Penate for allegedly selling heroin, the drugs from that case were tested at a state drug lab by technician Sonja Farak. 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. Farak as a young. Judge Kinder denied Ryans motion. One thing that How to Fix a Drug Scandal makes clear is that it wasnt all Sonja Faraks fault. In November 2013, Dookhan pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, and perjury. 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. The lead prosecutor on Farak's case knew about the diaries, as did supervisors at the state attorney general's office. Read More: Where is Sonja Farak Sister Now? 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. According to a Rolling Stone piece on Farak, she struggled with depression from an early age, one that hasnt responded to medication. They wrote that Farak attempted suicide in high school and was also hospitalized while in college. The lawsuit names Kaczmarek, Farak and three members of the state police. Talking Politics: Should a new government agency protect the coastline from climate change? Democratic Gov. She tried to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. Its unclear if Farak is still with Lee, as they have both remained out of the public eye since the case. 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. Instead, Kaczmarek provided copies to Farak's own attorney and asked that all evidence from Farak's car, including the worksheets, be kept away from prying defense attorneys representing the thousands of people convicted of drug crimes based on Farak's work. Why Won't Maryland Sell Me a Goddamn Beer? Kaczmarek, along with former assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and John Verner, all face possible sanctions. 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.