35-year-old Sonja Farak was arrested on two counts of evidence tampering and two counts of drug possession. How to Fix a Drug Scandal II
Annie Dookhan: classifications that were going on that weren’t completely accurate. ibid. lawyer
Dookhan: she was faking, she was cheating … she was simply signing off and getting these cases out the door. ibid. dude
[Judge] Kinder decides that these criminal acts of Farak’s only go back to July 2012. ibid.
2011: I’d already exhausted the methamphetamine, amphetamine and ketamine standards, and then I did start trying to smoke crack cocaine … There was not a lot of it … and quickly became very addicted … I actually smoked in the evidence room. How to Fix a Drug Scandal III, Farak
She began cooking powdered cocaine into crack at her work station. ibid. dude
Chemist Annie Dookhan was sentenced to a three-to-five year prison term for falsifying drug tests affecting tens of thousands of criminal cases. But there has been little movement to deal with all of the convictions based on the lab’s testing. ibid. news report
Northampton chemist Sonja Farak gets 18 months in jail. ibid.
It took years to work out what cases she [Farak] had worked on. How is this possible? ibid. defense guy
They [the state] argue they [victims] can all be retrialled one at a time. How to Fix a Drugs Scandal IV, news report
There were thousands and thousands of criminal cases whose convictions are probably invalid. ibid. defence dude
She [Farak] was definitely a drug addict. And my natural tendency is to really sympathise with drug addicts, and feel like they are suffering. ibid.
Judge Carey issued his decision – the Carey Report – it vindicated Luke Ryan and found that Anne Kaczmarek and Kris Foster had committed ‘a fraud upon the court’. ibid.
Judge Carey dismissed the charges against Rolando Panate ‘with prejudice’. After 5 years in custody, Rolando was released. Rolando was among the last defendants to be released from prison because of tainted drug evidence from the Amherst lab. ibid. caption
But there were still tens of thousands of people with felony convictions on their records based on drug evidence tested by Sonja Farak or Annie Dookhan. ibid.
The largest mass dismissal of criminal convictions in US history. ibid.
[Thomas] Midgley … put lead in petrol. In 1930 he discovered a new coolant for fridges: it was called by its initials – CFC. Midgley became part of a golden age of chemistry in America in the Thirties. Adam Curtis, Pandora’s Box IV: Goodbye, Mrs Ant, BBC 1992
It killed insects: it was called DDT … The United States was a continent plagued with insects. Farmers lived in perpetual fear of finding a new infestation. Whole crops were regularly destroyed by pests. DDT and the other insecticides invented in its wake promised victory in this war. ibid.
But the entomologists began to discover what appeared to be serious side effects … Many other species of wildlife were being harmed. ibid.
The chemical companies also portrayed the battle against the insects as a necessary war. ibid.
The first serious public attack on the widespread use of pesticides came from Rachel Carson. She was a biologist who had worked for the United States Fish and Wildlife service. In the late ’50s she began collecting evidence of the side effects. In particular, studies which showed that DDT was becoming more concentrated as it worked its way into the bodies of larger animals. In 1962 she wrote a book called Silent Spring. ibid.
Where once chemicals were seen as good now they were bad. In the early 1970s press and television became fascinated about any reports of the side effects of pesticides and herbicides and above all of the effects on human beings. ibid.
A prisoner but also a guinea pig for industry for industry like thousands of other inmates … Multinational chemical companies came here to test the risks of their products. One company did everything they did to keep this a secret … Dow Chemical … These multinationals all have one thing in common – a culture of secrecy. Poisoned Lives: Secrets of the Chemical Industry, 2021
Polluting lands, rivers and groundwater, behind the fumes of these factories we have discovered there are tens of thousand of victims. In India children are born with severe disabilities. ibid.
Lack of transparency, cynicism, denial – in the meantime they continue to reap the profits. ibid.
Dioxin: Dow would study its side effects on the prisoners. ibid.
Dow secretly dumped this waste in the river that flows through the city. ibid.