Sonja Farak was a chemist at a state drug lab in Amherst, Massachusetts, from 2005 to 2013. NEXT:How To Fix A Drug Scandal True Story: What The Documentary Leaves Out, 10 Things Everyone Completely Missed In Netflix's How to Fix a Drug Scandal, Top 10 Documentaries On Netflix Right Now (According To IMDb), The 10 Best Football Movies Ever Made, According to Rotten Tomatoes, Wicked Good: 10 Great Movies Set In Boston, How To Fix A Drug Scandal True Story: What The Documentary Leaves Out, Yellowstone's Dutton Family Tree Explained In Full, Witcher: Blood Origin Uses One NSFW History Detail Game Of Thrones Avoided, Fraiser Reboot Will Feature Some Original Show Cast Members After All. In 2017, Rolando Penate filed a $5.7 million lawsuit against 18 defendants, including 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. 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Without ever absolving these two women, Carr finds something tragic in . Inwardly though, Sonja Farak was striving. She is expected to be arraigned on Tuesday morning in Eastern Hampshire District Court. Specifically speaking, she played on the line on offense and defense. In fact, Farak was highly achieved before all her battles. Farak started her drug use by experimenting with liquid methamphetamine, but her addiction quickly becomes a habit and she started consuming other drugs such as cocaine, and crack, which she smoked in her drug labs bathroom, per Rolling Stone. We allege that this chemist tampered with evidence, placing the integrity of that evidence in question, Coakley said in a statement. Dookhan and Farak Case Hotline: 888-999-2881. Director Alex Gibney of Jigsaw Productions has been called "one of the most important documentarians of our time" by Esquire, and even The New York Times gave Gibney their praise. If your case was effected by Ms. Dookhans misconduct, your case was automatically vacated and dismissed with prejudice as of April 20, 2017, and a letter was mailed to you in May 2017 explaining what happened. This documentary mini-series follows the stories of these two drug lab . Sonja Farak. The day Farak was supposed to analyze the sample, she wrote in her diary, tried to resist [using] @ work but ended up failing, per the Washington Post. Sonja Farak is at the center of Netflix's new true crime docuseries, How To Fix a Drug Scandal. Farak, a chemist at the Massachusetts State Crime Laboratory in Amherst, was arrested in 2013. We also may change the frequency you receive our emails from us in order to keep you up to date and give you the best relevant information possible. Penate alleged Kaczmarek's actions violated his "Brady rights," which require prosecutors to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence to defense counsel. Matt is short for Matthew, and the mat is a play on words of his name. Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right. My findings, conclusions and credibility determinations above and below reflect that Kaczmarek not only failed to do this; she actively misled others in the AGO as to what had been produced to the DAOs.. 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. Documentary series How To Fix a Drug Scandal follows crime drug lab chemists Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan and how each of their own unique levels of misconduct impacted thousands of cases and resulted in chaos for the legal system. This mini docuseries was produced by Jigsaw Productions, the very same production company that workedon the memorable documentariesCitizen K, American Jihad, and Water and Power: A California Heist. How to Fix a Drug Scandal: With Shannon O'Neill, Karl Kenzler, Paul Solotaroff, Scott Allen. The depths of her thefts and addiction are explored over the course of the series. Money Heist season 3 recap: How did La Casa de Papel Part 3 end? A final decision is still pending and must be approved by the state Supreme Judicial Court. She disclosed to her therapist that all the drugs she was consuming came from her workplace. Sincevery few people willingly dabble in drugs, its more of a question to ask why is this person using drugs to begin with? This is even further legitimized when it's revealed Sonja Farak was dealing with depression since she was 16 years old. At the time of her arrest, she had resided in 37 Laurel Park in Northampton. As . Sonja Farak was released on parole in 2016 and has remained out of the spotlight ever since. A Board of Bar Overseers special hearing officer recently issued these findings in a 98-page decision about former assistant attorneys general Anne Kaczmarek, John Verner and Kris Foster. Kaczmarek has repeatedly testified she did not act intentionally and that she thought the worksheets had been turned over to the district attorneys who prosecuted the cases involved. Farak wasn't . After graduating from Portsmouth High School, Farak attended the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she got a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry in 2000. After high school, Sonja went on to major in biochemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in western Massachusetts. In the last couple of minutes of the mini-series, there seems to be a reunion at a local Boston restaurant, where many of the key players in the series appear. Massachusetts authorities are reviewing the sentences of 1,140 people who are in prison after being convicted with evidence at least partly provided by Dookhan. The filmmaker told that she spent a lot of time thinking about Farak and trying to humanize her. While Dookhan had tampered with evidence and indulged in dry-labbing, Farak stole from her workplace. Robertson rejected Kaczmarek's claims she should not be held responsible for the turning over of exculpatory evidence because she was not part of the "prosecution team" in Penate's case. 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. In Massachusetts it doesn't even end there. Get the latest headlines, releases and insider-gossip direct to your inbox with our Binge-worthy newsletter. Please limit your input to 500 characters. The staff in the new lab was also doubled, and the number of trainees was also increased. According to a Rolling Stone profile on Farak and the case, the former chemist has not been heard from since her release. In January 2014, Farak, then 35, of Northampton, was given an 18-month jail sentence after pleading guilty to four counts of theft of a controlled substance from an authorized dispensary (the drug . 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. But what happened next to the former lab chemist? Sonja Farak, of Northampton, a former chemist at the state crime lab in Amherst, appears in Hampshire Superior Court in Northampton in April 2013 for her arraignment on multiple counts of evidence . The show also examines the state problems while defining and . Sonja Farak in How to Fix a Drug Scandal. Sonja Farak's actions also tell a tragic but riveting tale of addiction and how far it can push a person. Carr said shes been shocked to read angry reactions towards Farak over Twitter. To find out if your case was affected by either Ms. Dookhan or Ms. Farak, you can call a toll-free hotline operated by defense lawyers with the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the public defender agency in Massachusetts. She had been accused of "intentional infliction of emotional distress in addition to the conspiracy to violate [Penate's] civil rights.". She was trying to suppress mental health issues, depression in specific, and she attempted to kill herself in high school, according to Rolling Stone. After weeks of hearings, a "special hearing officer" selected by the board recommended potential sanctions against them all. Kaczmarek also oversaw the prosecution for the attorney general's office in that case. Only a few months after Dookhan's conviction, it was discovered that another Massachusetts crime lab worker, Sonja Farak, who was addicted to drugs . As the docuseries represents, she confessed to a therapist in 2009 that she had been striving with addiction problems since 2005. The Bechdel Test is a test that measures the representation of women in fiction. She first worked at the Hinton State Laboratory in Jamaica Plain for a year as a bacteriologist working on HIV tests before she transferred to the Amherst Lab for drug analysis. According to the Washington Post, a judge who had looked into the case in 2016 described the prosecutors actions intentional, repeated, prolonged and deceptive withholding of evidence from the defendants.In 2014, Farak was found guilty of changing with evidence, ownership of illegal drugs, and stealing cocaine from the lab. Release year: 2020. In one, drug lab technician Sonja Farak was caught tampering with evidence so she could steal hard drugs for personal use. Farak is amongst one of the 18 defendants battling the lawsuit filed by Rolando Penate. Copyright 2023 by Vizaca. As Solotaroff recounts in detail, Massachusetts attorney Luke Ryan represented two people who were accused of drug charges that Farak had analyzed . On January 19, 2013, AGO investigators obtained a warrant to search Farak's car, searched the car, and seized hundreds of pages of paper, including the Diary Card and other mental health worksheets. Powered by. A Warner Bros. Commonwealth Magazine - After rare public trial, disciplinary case now in hands of hearing officer THE JANUARY 2013 drug arrest of disgraced Massachusetts state chemist Sonja Farak and its impact on thousands of drug cases was widely reported as it unfolded, and memorialized to devastating effect in Netflix's docu-series How to Fix a Drug Scandal. 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. In fact, Farak was a chemist at a state drug lab of a question to ask why is person! 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