With California less than two weeks away from legally being allowed to sell and use recreational marijuana, it could mean some big things also for people who have marijuana crime charges.
Hundreds of thousands of people could have their drug convictions wiped away due to a provision that comes with the state’s new marijuana law.
The state is offering people with convictions related to marijuana crimes a second chance. These crimes range from small infractions to even serious felonies.
Eunisses Hernandez, a policy coordinator at the Drug Policy Alliance, stated, “We worked to help create a legalized and regulated process for legal marijuana, but we also wanted to make sure we could help – some way, somehow – repair the damages of marijuana prohibition.”
The California Judicial Council has said that at least 4,500 people had filed petitions to have their sentences reduced, re-designated or thrown out as of September 2017.
Rachel Solov, chief of the collaborative courts division in the San Diego district attorney’s office remarked, “We absolutely didn’t want people to be in custody who shouldn’t be in custody.”
Omar Figueroa, a defense lawyer in Sebastopol, California, explains how the fact that people need to go to court may be a disadvantage for the poor.
He said, “That’s one of the criticisms, that a lot of people don’t have the time or energy or the access to public transportation to get to the courthouse. What I see is the people who have more means are the ones who are taking advantage of this, and the people who have more basic struggles in their everyday life, the last thing they’re thinking about is cleaning up their criminal history for their old marijuana convictions.”
