State chemist’s addiction may have affected more drug cases than previously known

The Boston Globe reports:

For years, Sonja Farak was addicted to cocaine, methamphetamine, and amphetamines, the kind of drugs usually bought from street dealers in covert transactions that carry the constant risk of arrest.

But between 2004 and 2013, the state chemist never left the office to feed her addiction.

“She obtains the drugs from her job at the state drug lab, by taking portions of samples that have come in to be tested,” one of Farak’s therapists wrote after an April 2009 counseling session, according to newly public treatment records filed in Hampden Superior Court. Farak told her therapist the drugs gave her energy, helped her to “get things done and not procrastinate.”

Now, defense lawyers say the discovery of Farak’s confessions in therapy prove that her evidence tampering — which state law enforcement officials had initially insisted was confined to a handful of cases starting in 2012 — was far worse than previously disclosed. About 10,000 or more prosecutions may have been tainted, they said.

Mistakes were made.