“I have scanned through hundreds of indexed records searching for any that indicate a possession or paraphernalia charge.”
By Rebecca Rivas, Missouri Independent
Missouri courts have expunged greater than 140,000 marijuana circumstances since voters permitted the 2022 constitutional modification to legalize leisure hashish.
And the numbers gained’t climb a lot increased than that.
Courts had been mandated, as a part of the modification, to search their files for eligible marijuana-related charges after which make it as in the event that they by no means existed on folks’s information.
Missouri’s greatest counties have made it by way of the majority of the duty, however some will proceed to chip away at it this 12 months.
“We are working on paper files in the mid-’80s,” mentioned Bryan Feemster, Greene County Circuit Clerk. “We may be nearing completion midway this year. We can’t be sure how many are left.”
The state courts’ paper information largely finish round 2014, and the primary marijuana-related drug statutes are from 1971, in response to info the state administrator supplied to courtroom clerks.
However, there’s no set date for a way far again the county courts should go.
Scott Lauck, spokesman for sixteenth Judicial Circuit in Jackson County, mentioned the clerks accomplished their evaluate of circumstances in December 2023.
“According to our criminal records department, we have completed the review of the marijuana expungements dated back to 1989,” Lauck mentioned. “That was as far back as we were able to identify cases on any reports available to us.”
The county generally, he mentioned, turns into conscious of extra defendants as they’re launched from probation.
“If we determine the charges were for marijuana, the cases are sent to the sentencing division for further review,” he mentioned.
St. Louis County Court clerks are within the “review and redetermination phase, to determine what review of our next group of cases will look like,” mentioned spokesman John O’Sullivan.
The Missouri Supreme Court estimates that about 307,000 circumstances have been reviewed—which might imply the counties expunged 46 p.c of the circumstances they reviewed.
But this estimate doesn’t embody the paper information.
For paper information, courtroom clerks should learn summaries for each single prison document. There’s no option to run a report to go looking sure prison codes.
Sammye White, circuit clerk in Iron County, mentioned the paper files are the slowest to identify.
“I have actually been working on this very thing this morning,” she mentioned Friday. “I have scanned through hundreds of indexed records searching for any that indicate a possession or paraphernalia charge.”
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 all the way down to a handful most certainly to qualify.
This story was first published by Missouri Independent.