sonja farak therapy notes
"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. In her initial police interview, given at her dining room table, Dookhan said she "would never falsify" results "because it's someone's life on the line." How to Fix a Drug Scandal: With Shannon O'Neill, Karl Kenzler, Paul Solotaroff, Scott Allen. In a March 2013 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. Instead, Kaczmarek proceeded as if the substance abuse was a recent development. After she was caught, Farak pleaded guilty to stealing drugs from the lab and was sentenced to prison time of 18 months. His report deemed Dookhan the "sole bad actor" at the lab, a finding that remains disputed in some circles. The Amherst Bulletin reported that her medical records indicated that she only became addicted to drugs once she started working at the lab, in 2004. She was also testifying in court while high. 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." Join us. Foster 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. Deborah Becker Twitter Host/ReporterDeborah Becker is a senior correspondent and host at WBUR. At least 11,000 cases have already been dismissed due to fallout from the scandal, with thousands more likely to come. There is nothing to indicate that the allegations against Farak date back to the time she tested the drugs in Penates case. 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. 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. Psychotherapy Progress Notes, as shown above, can be populated using clinical codes before they are linked with a client's appointments for easier admin and use in sessions. 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. When grand jury materials were eventually released to defense attorneys, then, they did not mention that these documents existed. It included information about the type of drugs she tampered with. Judge dismisses 'qualified immunity' claim in suit against ex - WBUR Months after Farak pleaded guilty in January 2014, Ryan filed a In June 2017, following hearings in which Kaczmarek, Foster, Verner, and others took the stand, a judge found that Kaczmarek and Foster together "piled misrepresentation upon misrepresentation to shield the mental health worksheets from disclosure.". Since then, she has kept a low profile. Officials recognized the worksheets for what they were: near-indisputable confessions. Ryan then filed a 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. Her role was to test for the presence of illegal substances, which could be instrumental in thousands of . What Netflix's How To Fix a Drug Scandal didn't tell you - Esquire Cleverly omitting pronouns, she wrote that "after reviewing" the file, "every documenthas been disclosed." One of the reasons for the decrepit state and standard of the Amherst lab was the lack of funds. Despite her status as a free woman (who has seemingly disappeared from the public eye), Farak's wrongdoings continue to make waves in the Massachusetts courts. ", Prosecutors nationwide pretty uniformly backed this argument, which the Supreme Court rejected in a 54 opinion. In fall 2012, just five months before her arrest, Annie Dookhan confessed to faking analyses and altering samples in the Boston testing facility where she worked. Between the two women, 47,000 drug convictions and guilty pleas have been dismissed in the last two years, many for misdemeanor possession. 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.". 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. The defense bar had raised concerns that prosecutors might be "perceived as having a stake" in such an investigation. The fact that she ran analyses while high and regularly dipped into samples casts doubt on thousands of convictions. Over time, Farak's drug use turned to cocaine, LSD and, eventually, crack. Farak struggled with mental health throughout her life, the documentary series explains. Foster and another assistant attorney general assented to that motion. After serving just a year of her 18 month sentence, Farak was released from prison in 2015. This not only led to people getting a reprieve from prison but also filing their own lawsuits against the injustice they had to suffer. TherapyNotes 2. As . One thing that How to Fix a Drug Scandal makes clear is that it wasnt all Sonja Faraks fault. 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. "All Defendant had to do to honor the Plaintiffs Brady rights was to turn over copies of documents that were obviously exculpatory as to the Farak defendants or accede to one of the repeated requests from counsel, including Plaintiffs counsel, that they be permitted to inspect the evidence seized from Faraks car," Robertson wrote in her ruling. She grew up in Portsmouth with her sister Amy. Foster protested that portions of the evidentiary file in question might be privileged or not subject to disclosure. Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the state of Massachusetts, specializing in identifying illegal substances. Each employee had a unique swipe card, but Farak simply used a physical key to get in after hours and on weekends. 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. She recovered, made it through college and got a job as a chemist at the Amherst Crime Lab, where she tested confiscated drugs. The Board of Bar Overseers (BBO) is reviewing the actions of three prosecutors in the investigation of the scandal to determine whether any of them deliberately withheld potentially exculpatory evidence. Why Won't Maryland Sell Me a Goddamn Beer? Local prosecutors also remained in the dark. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015 But she proceeded on the hunch that Farak only became addicted in the months before her arrest, and her colleagues stonewalled people who were skeptical of that timeline. Dookhan had seeded public mistrust in the criminal justice system, which "now becomes an issue in every criminal trial for every defendant.". (Belchertown, MA, 01/22/13) Sonja Farak, 35, of Northampton, is arraigned in Eastern Hampshire District Court in Belchertown on charges that she stole cocaine and heroin while working as a. Out of "an abundance of caution," Kaczmarek didn't present them to the grand jury that was convened to determine whether to indict Farak. Kaczmarek was now juggling two scandals on opposite sides of the state. sonja farak - masslive.com Kaczmarek got a note from Sgt. Penate's lawsuit, which seeks $5.7 million in damages, is believed to be one of the last remaining suits tied to the scandals; the statute of limitations to file such suits has expired. B. ut when Penates lawyer tried to obtain the documents not certain what was in them before his clients 2013 trial, he was rebuffed by state prosecutors who said the papers were irrelevant according to emails included in investigative reports unsealed earlier this month. The attorney general's representative at these hearings was Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster, a recent hire. But Ryan, who represented Penate, suspected it was more extensive. He emailed them to Kaczmareksubject: "FARAK Admissions." Shortly into her role at Amherst, Farak decided to try liquid methamphetamine to ease her personal struggles. Relying on an investigation conducted by state police, the judges The governor also tapped a local attorney, David Meier, to count how many individuals' cases might be tainted. 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. Widening scandal at state drug lab in Mass. exposes opportunities for food banks expect a surge, As streaming services boom, cable TV continues its decline. Foster, now general counsel at the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission, and Kaczmarek, now a clerk magistrate in Suffolk Superior Court, declined to comment for this story. concluded there was no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or obstruction of justice in matters related to the Farak case. She's no longer in prison, as Farak has served her sentence. Even though Farak found a job after graduation and was settled down with her partner, she continued to struggle with depression and felt like a stranger in her body. They wrote that Lee, disabled by a stew of mental ailments, [spent] her hours surfing the Web in a haze.. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); NEXT: Zoning Makes the Green New Deal Impossible. Former chemist Annie Dookhan was convicted in 2013 on charges of improperly testing drug evidence at a drug lab in Boston. Finding that there did not appear to be enough slides in Dookhan's discard pile to match her numbers, the colleague brought his concerns to an outside attorney, who advised he should be careful making "accusations about a young woman's career," he later told state police. On a Friday afternoon in January 2013, a call came in to Coakley's office: "We have another Annie Dookhan out west.". | After high school, Sonja went on to major in biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts. Sonja Farak, a chemist with a longterm mental health struggle, is the catalyst of the story, but it doesn't end with her. As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . Gainey added that Healey is pleased with their conclusion that prosecutors and the state police acted appropriately. Netflix's How to Fix a Drug Scandal: What Happened To Sonja Farak Investigators found that Sonja Farak tested drug samples and testified in court while under the influence of methamphetamines, ketamine, cocaine, LSD and other drugs between 2005 and 2013. Farak worked under the influence of drugs for nine years - from 2004 to 2013 - before she was caught. 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 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. She is not active on any social media platform and has kept her distance from the press. Watch How to Fix a Drug Scandal | Netflix Official Site Yet Dookhan's brazen crimes went undetected for ages. The last contact information provided by her, in response to Penates allegations, placed her residence in Hatfield, Massachusetts. The medical records stated that she did not have an existing drug problem that was amplified by her access to more substances. Most important, they found seven worksheets from Farak's substance abuse therapy. Listen Live: Classic and Contemporary Celtic, Listen Live: Cape, Coast and Islands NPR Station, Boston nonprofit Street2Ivy is producing this generation's entrepreneurs. denied Penates motion to dismiss the case, saying there was no evidence that Faraks misconduct extended to his case. February 2013 email, to which he attached the worksheets. "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. She was ar-rested for tampering with evidence while abusing narcotics at work. State chemist may have affected more drug cases than previously known Despite being a star child of the family, Sonja suffered from the mental illnesses that haunted her even in adulthood. The twin Massachusetts drug lab scandals are unprecedented in the sheer number of cases thrown out because of forensic misconduct. "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." Dookhan was sentenced to prison in 2013. "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. Who is Sonja Farak, the former state drug lab chemist featured in the show? "I dont know how the Velis report reached the conclusion it did after reviewing the underlying email documents, said Randy Gioia, deputy chief counsel at the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the states public defender office. Between 2005 and 2013, Sonja Farak was performing laboratory tests at a state drug lab in Amherst while under the influence of narcotics. Episode 2. Poetically, that landmark case originated from the Hinton lab, although Dookhan didn't conduct the analysis in question. Who Is Sonja Farak From Netflix Docu-Series How To Fix A Drug Scandal But whether anyone investigated her conduct during a brief stint working at the state's Boston drug lab is at . That settlement awaits approval by a judge. 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. 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. 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.". In 2019, the chemist was spotted at federal court in Springfield, MA , attending a civil case. "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. A hearing on their motions is scheduled next month. Farak as a young. Emma Camp 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. Penate was convicted in December 2013 and sentenced to serve five to seven years. To better estimate how many convictions will have to be reviewed because of Farak, the Supreme Judicial Court She had been accused of intentional infliction of emotional distress in addition to the conspiracy to violate [Penates] civil rights.. Since her release, she has kept a low profile and managed to stay out of the public . He was floored when he found the worksheets. The special hearing officer found Kaczmarek "displayed no remorse" and was "not candid" during the disciplinary proceedings. Stream GBH's Award-Winning Content For Parents And Children. TherapyNotes. Kaczmarek, along with former assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and John Verner, all face possible sanctions. But when the relevant police reports were released to defense attorneys, there was no mention of the diary entries' existence, much less that they went back so far. | Several defense attorneys who called for the Velis-Merrigan investigation say the former judges and their state police investigators got it wrong. Rollins said it covers "a period of time in which either now disgraced chemist Annie Dookhan, or another convicted chemist Sonja Farak ," worked there. . 1. 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. In an August 2013 email, Ryan asked Assistant Attorney General Kris Foster to review evidence taken from Farak. Grand Jury Transcript - Sonja Farak - September 16, 2015. 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. Sonja Farak is at the center of Netflix's new true crime docuseries, How To Fix a Drug Scandal. Her access to evidence was not restricted, and she continued testifying in court. 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.