Pubdate: Wed, 04 May 2016
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2016 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: http://services.bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340
Website: http://bostonglobe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Evan Allen

STATE CHEMIST WAS HIGH ON THE JOB FOR YEARS, REPORT SAYS

A state chemist at an Amherst drug lab got high on methamphetamines 
or other drugs almost every day at work for nearly eight years, 
consumed the lab's own supply of drugs, and cooked crack cocaine in 
the lab after hours - actions that jeopardize an untold number of 
cases - according to an investigative report released Tuesday.

Investigators for the attorney general's office found that chemist 
Sonja Farak had tested drug samples or testified in court between 
about 2005 and 2013 while under the influence of meth, ketamine, 
cocaine, LSD, and other drugs, according to the report, much of which 
is based on Farak's own grand jury testimony. She even smoked crack 
before a 2012 interview with State Police officials inspecting the 
lab for accreditation purposes, she testified.

"We are deeply concerned whenever the integrity of the justice system 
is called into question or compromised," Cyndi Roy Gonzalez, 
spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey, said in a statement. 
"The information we gathered during the course of our investigation 
is disturbing and will no doubt have implications for many cases."

Although the number of cases potentially affected was not clear 
Tuesday, defense attorneys and advocates said the damage was not 
limited to those samples tested by Farak at the now-shuttered lab.

"Anything that went through that lab while she was there is in 
question," said Anthony Benedetti, chief counsel of the Committee for 
Public Counsel Services. "It's too soon to know how many, but it 
clearly is in the thousands."

Defense attorneys have pointed to Farak's alleged misdeeds for more 
than a year, suggesting they were more widespread than law 
enforcement officials believed. Tuesday's report provides the most 
detailed public portrait of her activities.

Farak was arrested in January 2013 after a coworker discovered 
missing drug samples. She pleaded guilty in Hampshire Superior Court 
in early 2014 to four counts of tampering with evidence, four counts 
of stealing cocaine from the lab, and two counts of unlawful 
possession of cocaine, and was sentenced to 18 months behind bars.

Farak's case surfaced months after another state chemist, Annie 
Dookhan, was arrested in September 2012 and found to have fabricated 
evidence in thousands of samples she tested at a second state lab in 
Jamaica Plain, possibly tainting as many as 40,000 cases. Dookhan was 
paroled in April.

The newly released investigation was prompted by a ruling from the 
state Supreme Judicial Court last April, which said top state law 
enforcement officials failed to fully investigate how many times 
Farak tampered with drug evidence after her arrest in 2013.

"This is a statewide problem," said attorney Luke Ryan, who helped 
bring the scope of Farak's drug use and evidence tampering to light, 
and who represents several defendants whose samples purportedly were 
tested by Farak. "The fact that we're doing this in 2016 instead of 
2013 makes the job so much harder. . . . The chances of people 
falling through the cracks really increases."

Farak testified she was a recreational drug user before she began 
working as a state chemist, according to the report, but began 
consuming the Amherst lab's "primary standards" in late 2004 or early 
2005. The standards are "certified" drugs purchased from a chemical 
company that chemists use in comparisons with unknown samples. She 
started with methamphetamines, she testified, taking them multiple 
times a day and nearly exhausting the lab's stock by 2009.

She also used many other reference drugs, she testified, and consumed 
her coworkers' samples, as well as samples police brought in as 
evidence. When cocaine samples coming into the lab dwindled, she 
testified, she began doing crack cocaine. She cooked it in the lab 
after hours starting in 2012, she testified. She used crack 
throughout the building and at her work station, she said - even when 
other employees were at the lab.

The supervisor of the Amherst lab testified that the lab was in 
"deplorable" condition, with limited funding and no security, 
according to the report. Because of time constraints and difficulty, 
workers usually identified "Class E" substances, which are substances 
in pill form, visually, without any tests at all, he said.

He also said the "standards" were never audited before 2012, and that 
budgetary constraints made purchasing new standards impossible - so 
he made them himself.

'Anything that went through that lab while she was there is in 
question.' Anthony Benedetti, Committee for Public Counsel Services 
chief counsel

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts said the 
magnitude of Farak's misconduct rivaled that of Dookhan. The ACLU and 
other defense advocates called for the potentially affected cases to 
be identified and the charges against defendants dropped.

"It's easy to get caught up in these scandals, zooming in on the 
specific misconduct because it's so salacious," said Matthew Segal, 
legal director for the ACLU of Massachusetts. "But it's also 
important to zoom out, and take a look at what the drug war in 
Massachusetts has wrought. It hasn't cured us of an addiction 
problem. It has obliterated the integrity that is supposed to be the 
foundation of the criminal justice system."

A second report released Tuesday found that prosecutors did not 
withhold evidence about Farak's misconduct from defense attorneys.

Farak's attorney could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

Globe correspondent Olivia Arnold contributed to this report.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom