SJC asked to toss cases tied to disgraced chemist
Countless convictions could be thrown out
The state’s public defenders office is calling on the Supreme Judicial Court to not only toss thousands of cases tied to disgraced state chemist Sonja Farak but also send an “appropriate” message, warning that evidentiary missteps are “threatening to become an epidemic” amid a slew of new scandals.
The Committee for Public Counsel’s petition to dismiss a still-unknown number of cases comes two months after Hampden Superior Court Judge Richard J. Carey unleashed a public rebuke of two prosecutors in the attorney general’s office who handled Farak cases, saying they “committed fraud upon the court” by withholding crucial documents detailing the extent of the ex-Amherst chemist’s misdeeds.
But the scandal is not the state’s only looming problem, lawyers argue. CPCS pointed to the state’s recent admission that it didn’t provide potentially damning evidence about a controversial drunken-driving breath test, which threw tens of thousands of cases into question.
Evidence room problems have also sprouted in police departments from Springfield to Braintree over the last two years. And Farak’s action didn’t even create the state’s first drug lab scandal — tampering by ex-chemist Annie Dookhan also prompted the SJC to toss more than 21,500 cases in April.
“What we really need is the court to address what has been looking like an epidemic of discovery problems and notification problems,” CPCS attorney Rebecca Jacobstein told the Herald.
In the 30-page petition Jacobstein helped write, lawyers asked SJC to provide a standing order to govern prosecutor conduct because “weak discovery and notice practices by prosecutors are threatening to become an epidemic.”
Attorneys also said that a mass dismissal is warranted given Carey’s June ruling on former Assistant Attorneys General Anne Kaczmarek and Kris Foster. When Farak was arrested in early 2013, police seized “mental health worksheets” she kept from her substance abuse therapy indicating she had been getting high off drug samples since 2011. But the two prosecutors didn’t disclose that evidence, and the AGs later said her drug use could stem as far back as 2004.
Jillian Fennimore, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey, defended the work of her office and the state’s district attorneys, who she said have been working for “many months” to identify those impacted by Farak — efforts of which CPCS was aware.