Missouri Courts Have Expunged More Than 140,000 Marijuana Cases Since Legalization In 2022
“I’ve scanned by means of a whole lot of listed data looking for any that point out a possession or paraphernalia cost.”
By Rebecca Rivas, Missouri Unbiased
Missouri courts have expunged greater than 140,000 marijuana instances since voters permitted the 2022 constitutional modification to legalize leisure hashish.
And the numbers received’t climb a lot larger than that.
Courts have been mandated, as a part of the modification, to go looking their information for eligible marijuana-related costs after which make it as in the event that they by no means existed on individuals’s data.
Missouri’s largest counties have made it by means of the majority of the duty, however some will proceed to chip away at it this yr.
“We’re engaged on paper information within the mid-’80s,” stated Bryan Feemster, Greene County Circuit Clerk. “We could also be nearing completion halfway this yr. We will’t ensure what number of are left.”
The state courts’ paper information largely finish round 2014, and the primary marijuana-related drug statutes are from 1971, in keeping with data the state administrator supplied to courtroom clerks.
Nonetheless, there’s no set date for the way far again the county courts should go.
Scott Lauck, spokesman for sixteenth Judicial Circuit in Jackson County, stated the clerks accomplished their evaluation of instances in December 2023.
“In keeping with our prison data division, we’ve got accomplished the evaluation of the marijuana expungements dated again to 1989,” Lauck stated. “That was way back to we have been capable of determine instances on any experiences accessible to us.”
The county typically, he stated, turns into conscious of extra defendants as they’re launched from probation.
“If we decide the costs have been for marijuana, the instances are despatched to the sentencing division for additional evaluation,” he stated.
St. Louis County Courtroom clerks are within the “evaluation and redetermination section, to find out what evaluation of our subsequent group of instances will seem like,” stated spokesman John O’Sullivan.
The Missouri Supreme Courtroom estimates that about 307,000 instances have been reviewed—which might imply the counties expunged 46 % of the instances they reviewed.
However this estimate doesn’t embody the paper data.
For paper data, courtroom clerks should learn summaries for each single prison report. There’s no approach to run a report to go looking sure prison codes.
Sammye White, circuit clerk in Iron County, stated the paper information are the slowest to determine.
“I’ve really been engaged on this very factor this morning,” she stated Friday. “I’ve scanned by means of a whole lot of listed data looking for any that point out a possession or paraphernalia cost.”
When she finds a drug cost, she has to then discover the precise file to see if the drug cost was marijuana.
Out of these, she has to slim it right down to a handful most probably to qualify.
