What happened to Luke Ryan, the Massachusetts defense attorney from How to Fix a Drug Scandal? Directed by Erin Lee Carr, the four-part Netflix docuseries depicts the criminal investigation of two drug analysts - Sonja Farak and Annie Dookhan - who manipulated the legal process for self-serving reasons.
In How to Fix a Drug Scandal on Netflix, Ryan is the primary on-camera interviewee. As a defense attorney, he discusses the importance of understanding client backstories, as opposed to focusing on a "narrow" timeframe that typically interests prosecutors. The Netflix docuseries follows Ryan's attempts to learn the full truth about Farak's drug use and tampering at the Morrill Science Center from 2004 to 2013, and Ryan experiences a major setback when the Attorney General's Office refuses to hand over evidence that's deemed "irrelevant." A judge concludes that Farak's drug use commenced in 2012, but Ryan believes it may have started years before. Overall, How to Fix a Drug Scandal deconstructs a cover-up that prevented attorneys from receiving the exculpatory evidence they needed to properly defend clients.
How to Fix a Drug Scandal on Netflix portrays Ryan as highly-motivated defense attorney and reveals that he was finally able to examine evidence that shows Farak's tampering began in 2004 - just three months into her job. As a result, over 35,000 cases were ultimately dismissed because of Farak and Dookhan's collective incompetence. But what happened to Luke Ryan after How to Fix a Drug Scandal's story concluded?
Ryan's LinkedIn profile shows that he's been part of the firm Sasson, Turnbull, Ryan & Hoose since January 2011. He graduated from Western New England Law, and currently works in Southampton, Massachusetts, the same city where Farak lived while working at the Morrill Science Center. In 2018, Rolling Stone published an drug-themed expose about Ryan's work entitled "And Justice For None: Inside Biggest Law Enforcement Scandal in Massachusetts History," and the author, Paul Solotaroff, appears in How to Fix a Drug Scandal as well.
In 2020, Ryan continues to defend people involved with drug cases. As noted in How to Fix a Drug Scandal, though, he's fully invested in providing the whole story about his clients and how they wind up in positions where they're forced to make difficult decisions. The legal system initially failed Ryan during the Farak case - evidenced by the cover-up involving assistant attorneys general Kris Foster and Anne Kaczmarek - but the system ultimately succeeded by identifying a "fraud upon the court" and a major miscarriage of justice. "They've gotta prove it," Ryan says in the Netflix docuseries. "If the government wants to convict a defendant, then the government and all of its actors have to be above reproach."