STORY: "AG report exposes ex-state chemist's reckless drug abuse," by reporter Matt Stout, published by The Boston Herald on May 3, 2016.
GIST: A
former drug-addicted chemist at an Amherst state lab was dipping into samples
for at least eight years to feed her habit -- including even cooking crack
cocaine inside the lab itself -- a newly released state investigation found. The
new findings could potentially jeopardize thousands more cases than officials
originally thought. The
findings, disclosed in a report filed by Attorney General Maura Healey's office
and made public today under a court order, details years of thefts and drug use
by former chemist Sonja Farak, who was convicted in 2014 of tampering with
evidence and sentenced to 18 months in prison. It
comes after defense attorneys in other drug cases challenged that her
misconduct went far beyond the handful of cases on which she was prosecuted,
prompting the Supreme Judicial Court to determine in April 2015 that the state
did not do enough to probe the full scope of her misconduct. Healey's
office, as a result, launched an investigation and convened a grand jury. It
ultimately determined that Farak began taking drugs from the lab "on a
fairly regular basis beginning in late 2004 or early 2005" through her
arrest in January 2013. The
determination and broadening scope of Farak's misconduct has shades of the
state's other drug lab scandal involving disgraced chemist Annie Dookhan, whose
years-long tampering of evidence at the Hinton Laboratory possibly tainted as
many as 40,000 cases. Cyndi
Roy Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Healey said it will now be up to the court and
district attorney offices to determine the full scope of cases possibly
impacted by Farak, but defense attorneys have said it could be in the
thousands. The
chemist, who has since been released from prison, was granted immunity as part
of the investigation, and thus will not face any additional criminal charges,
despite the findings, Gonzales said..........According
to the report -- dated April 1 -- Farak started by dipping into the lab's
methamphetamine "standard," a sample chemists use as a benchmark to
test against substances submitted by police for testing. By
the time she was arrested, she had moved on to ketamine, LSD and cocaine
samples that had been submitted to the lab -- and all without detection of her
colleagues, supervisors and, in some cases police, Healey's office found. By
2011, Farak had "exhausted" the standard samples for the
methamphetamine, amphetamine, and ketamine inside the lab, while leaving the
cocaine standard "substantially diminished." She
also began using cocaine directly inside the lab, including at her own
workstation and in some cases while other employees were present, investigators
found. It
progressed to the point that in 2012 when Farak was cooking crack cocaine
inside the state lab after normal hours or when she worked overtime, dissolving
the powdered cocaine in water, adding baking soda, and heating it up to form
crack. "All
told, she estimated that she was smoking crack ten to twelve times a day,"
the report notes. "Farak testified that the other Lab employees never
discovered what she was doing." Farak
testified during a grand jury she even got high before a 2012 interview with
state police after the department had taken over the lab in the wake of the
Dookhan scandal. Farak
said she smoked crack cocaine in the morning and again at "lunchtime"
before a scheduled 1 p.m. interview, but over the course of the 15- to
20-minute interview, "there were no suspicions ever raised about her use
of drugs," she testified. She
said she also got high before testifying in court on behalf of cases in which
she tested drugs. In
a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts said the
magnitude of Farak's misconduct "rivals" that of Dookhan's, adding
that "the twin Massachusetts scandals have no known parallel elsewhere in
the country." "There
is only one sensible response to these revelations: promptly notify the people
who were denied due process, undo their wrongful convictions, and rethink the
unjust war on drugs," Matthew Segal, legal director of the ACLU of
Massachusetts, said. "These scandals, and the years it has taken to
uncover them, demand a remedy for the thousands of criminal defendants who were
convicted based on false and tainted evidence.""
The entire story can be found at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.
Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com;
Harold Levy;
Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
