Mass. district attorneys on Thursday said they would dismiss more than 6,000 drug convictions
By Shawn Musgrave GLOBE CORRESPONDENT NOVEMBER 30, 2017
Massachusetts district attorneys on Thursday said they would dismiss more than 6,000 drug convictions due to misconduct by a former drug lab chemist and two former state prosecutors. It marks the second time this year that thousands of drug charges were wiped away due to official misconduct.
The latest dismissals follow years of litigation over crimes committed by Sonja Farak, a former chemist at the Amherst drug lab. Farak was arrested in 2013 on charges of stealing from the evidence locker to feed her own addiction. She pleaded guilty in 2014.
Farak’s misconduct was compounded further by two former state prosecutors in the attorney general’s office who withheld evidence regarding the scope of the chemist’s crimes. Last June, a Springfield judge ruled that the prosecutors committed a “fraud upon the court.”
Two women convicted for drug possession based in part on evidence handled by Farak filed a lawsuit in the state Supreme Judicial Court in September, alleging that prosecutors never notified them of the misconduct findings against either Farak or the prosecutors. In early November, a judge ordered all Massachusetts district attorneys to review their case files for Farak-related convictions and identify charges they were willing to dismiss.
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