sonja farak therapy notes
Despite such unequivocal findings of misconduct, the court removed language about Kaczmarek and Foster from notification letters to those whose cases have been dismissed, which will be sent out in early 2019. The special hearing officer found Kaczmarek "displayed no remorse" and was "not candid" during the disciplinary proceedings. Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. "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. Two drug lab chemists' shocking crimes cripple a state's judicial system and blur the lines of justice for lawyers, officials and thousands of inmates. Two weeks after Ryans discovery, the Attorney Generals Office | The Netflix docuseries ends by acknowledging that Farak received an 18-month sentence, and that defense attorney Luke Ryan was able . Foster said that Kaczmarek told her all relevant evidence had been turned over and that her supervisor told her to write the letter, though both denied these claims. Join half a million readers enjoying Newsweek's free newsletters, Sonja Farak is the subject of Netflix's "How To Fix a Drug Scandal. Thanks to Farak's testimony and those diary worksheets, we now know that, soon after joining the Amherst lab in 2004, Farak started skimming from the methamphetamine "standard," an undiluted oil used as a reference against which suspected meth samples are compared. 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." In the aftermath, the court felt it necessary to make clear that "no prosecutorhas the authority to decline to disclose exculpatory information.". 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. | Shown results suggesting otherwise, she copped to contaminating samples "a few times" during the previous "two to three years.". This immediately provoked questions about the thousands of cases in which her findings had contributed to the imprisonment of an individual. 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. Over the next four years, Farak consumed nearly all of it. 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. At the time of Penates trial, the state Attorney Generals Office contended Faraks misdeeds dated back only as far as 2012. The Dookhan prosecution was barely underway, a grand jury having returned indictments a few weeks earlier. | 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. Among the papers they seized were handwritten worksheets Farak completed for drug-abuse therapy. Terms Of Use, (Annie Dookhan (left) and Sonja Farak, Associated Press). This was not true, as Nassif's department later conceded. 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. Dookhan was sentenced to prison in 2013. 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.". Shortly into her role at Amherst, Farak decided to try liquid methamphetamine to ease her personal struggles. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015 Contributed by Shawn Musgrave (Musgrave Investigations) p. 1. Farak is amongst one of the 18 defendants battling the lawsuit filed by Rolando Penate. She was sentenced in 2014 to 18 months in prison and 5 years of probation. Verner, who testified that he didn't "micromanage" Kaczmarek, escaped criticism. Disgraced drug lab chemist Sonja Farak emerges as her own attorney as defendant in $5.7 million federal lawsuit. Farak received a sentence of 18 months in jail and 5 years of probation. Deval Patrick's office didn't learn about the protocol breach until December 2011. Stream GBH's Award-Winning Content For Parents And Children. In the aftermath of Farak's arrest, it's been argued that because she was under the influence, all of the cases she tested could be considered to have been wrongfully convicted. Read More: Where is Sonja Farak Sister Now? Obviously, after a blunder of such scale, no one would want their samples checked from the same lab. Instead, Coakley's office served as gatekeeper to evidence that could have untangled the scandal and freed thousands of people from prison and jail years earlier, or at least wiped their improper convictions off the books. wrote she "tried to resist using @ work, but ended up failing." 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. (Featured Image Credit: Mass Live). His email was one of more than 800 released with the Velis-Merrigan report. 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. 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. Coakley's office finally launched a criminal investigation in July 2012, more than a year after the infraction was discovered by Dookhan's supervisors. Thank you! Gainey added that Healey is pleased with their conclusion that prosecutors and the state police acted appropriately. 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." "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 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. Listen Live: Classic and Contemporary Celtic, Listen Live: Cape, Coast and Islands NPR Station, Boston nonprofit Street2Ivy is producing this generation's entrepreneurs. A status hearing on Penate's suit, which was filed in 2017, is scheduled for July. Farak admitted to being on a list of drugs while working between 2004 and her 2013 arrest. Meier put the number at 40,323 defendants, though some have called that an overestimate. shipped nearly 300 pages of previously undisclosed materials to local prosecutors around the state. Her medical records included notes from Faraks therapist in Amherst, Anna Kogan. Sonja Farak (Netflix) An ex-lab chemist Sonja Farak's negligence and misdeeds shocked US when she was arrested in 2013 for stealing and using drugs from the lab where she worked. 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 . He also 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. Sonja Farak is at the center of Netflix's new true crime docuseries, How To Fix a Drug Scandal. Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to stealing samples of drugs from an Amherst drug lab. The defense bar also demanded answers on how such crucial evidence stayed buried for so long. The story of the intertwining Farak and Penate evidence began in January 2013, when state police arrested Farak and searched her car. The chemist, Sonja Farak, worked at the state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, for more than eight years. The court also dismissed all meth cases processed at the lab since Farak started in 2004. 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. memo, Kaczmarek told her supervisors that "Farak's admissions on her 'emotional worksheets' recovered from her car detail her struggle with substance abuse. 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. "These drugswere tested fairly," Coakley claimed the day after Farak's arrest. "It would be difficult to overstate the significance of these documents, Ryan Get all the latest from Sanditon on GBH Passport, How one Brookline studio helps artists with disabilities thrive. Without even interviewing Foster, they determined there was "no evidence" of obstruction of justice by her, by Kaczmarek, or by any state prosecutor. 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. The Farak documents indicate she used drugs on the very day she certified samples as heroin in Penates case. The fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. Kaczmarek also oversaw the prosecution for the attorney general's office in that case. It ultimately took a blatant violation to expose Dookhan, and even then her bosses twisted themselves in knots to hold on to their "super woman.". It contained substances often used to make counterfeit cocaine, including soap, baking soda, candle wax, and modeling clay, plus lab dishes, wax paper, and fragments of a crack pipe. Sonja Farak is in the grip of a rubbed-raw depression that hasn't responded to medication. memo to Judge Kinder the next week, Foster said she reviewed the file, and said every document in it had already been disclosed. 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. 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. The attorney general's officeKaczmarek or her supervisorscould have asked a judge to determine whether the worksheets were actually privileged, as Kaczmarek later acknowledged. In an August 2013 email, Ryan asked Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster to review evidence taken from Farak. Among the papers they seized were handwritten worksheets Farak completed for drug-abuse therapy.