“You have some courts, in my humble opinion, that aren’t processing them because they just don’t want to.”
By Moe Ok. Clark, InvestigateWest
When Lisa Giap opened an electronic mail from the Pierce County Superior Court in January 2024 that mentioned her earlier drug conviction from 2015 had been cleared from her felony document, she was shocked.
It wasn’t till she referred to as the court docket clerk to verify that the fact set in.
“It was definitely a big moment for me and my family, just to know that that’s gone,” mentioned 38-year-old Giap. “I’m finally able to put this behind me.”
Giap is certainly one of many Washingtonians eligible to have their case vacated after the Washington Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that the state’s simple drug possession law was unconstitutional as a result of it lacked language associated to intent. The ruling, often known as State v. Blake, was historic in that it not solely made Washington’s legislation void but additionally made lots of of hundreds of previous misdemeanor and felony convictions relationship again to 1971 eligible to be wiped from an individual’s felony document—and any monetary prices stemming instantly from the conviction eligible to be refunded. A new law criminalizing drug possession, coined the “Blake-fix,” went into impact in July 2023.
“Washington was one of the only states in the country that still had that draconian of language,” mentioned Katrin Johnson, the deputy director for operations on the Washington Office of Public Defense. “That’s one of the cornerstones of our legal system, that there has to be some knowing element that the state has to prove.”
When the state Supreme Court ruling was introduced, Johnson thought the work would largely be a easy repair in a database. But the fact is much extra difficult—particularly given Washington’s non-unified court docket system, which permits courts all through the state—and judicial officers—to function largely independently of each other.
Given the complexity and the patchwork of approaches throughout the state, the method to vacate the estimated 626,188 circumstances has been comparatively sluggish. As of January 2025, the Washington State Patrol stories that roughly 114,567 circumstances have been vacated statewide, accounting for 18 % of the estimated eligible circumstances recognized by the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC). This determine displays a mixture of knowledge analyses from each companies, which can have an effect on the ultimate depend.
“Our legal system is really designed to process criminal cases in one direction,” Johnson mentioned. “To correct cases going backward, it’s not the same thing.” In actuality, she mentioned, “it’s like putting toothpaste back in the tube.”
Varying approaches
While some courts have been proactive in figuring out and vacating eligible circumstances, others have left it as much as the impacted people to navigate the convoluted system and provoke the method independently.
The course of, which must be initiated on the court docket the place the conviction was given, entails three distinct steps: resentencing circumstances that contain greater than only a possession cost; vacating eligible circumstances off an individual’s felony document; and submitting a refund request with the state’s Blake Refund Bureau as soon as a vacate is issued for any related monetary prices stemming from the conviction. Refunds will be wherever from just a few {dollars} to almost $9,000 relying on the monetary prices, and accrued curiosity, related to the conviction.
Even after years of labor, courts nonetheless have a protracted solution to go: 63 % of circumstances in Superior Courts and Municipal Courts nonetheless should be vacated, in line with information from the Office of Public Defense, whereas 89 % of eligible circumstances in District Courts nonetheless should be vacated.
The group tasked with overseeing State v. Blake work on the Office of Public Defense estimates that it’s going to take native courts till at the least 2027 to vacate the remaining circumstances on the present fee.
Part of the problem is that the excessive court docket ruling did not impose a timeline for courts. In 2022, lawmakers tried to cross a legislation that will define some fundamental parameters and set a timeline for the method, however the invoice died after pushback from influential organizations just like the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys and the Washington State Association of Counties. Another invoice launched in 2023 confronted the same destiny.
“Everybody’s concerned that the Legislature is going to think that, ‘Shouldn’t we be done by now?’” mentioned Deborah Espinosa, the manager director of Living with Conviction, a nonprofit targeted on the collateral penalties of felony justice involvement. “This is a hard population to find and serve, and I just hope that people have patience.”
Currently, a neighborhood court docket also can apply for state funding to rent a employees particular person to sort out Blake circumstances, however the funding is appropriated yearly which makes it troublesome for native governments to recruit and rent employees, Johnson mentioned. The state Administrative Office of the Courts is within the course of of making a separate workplace that would assist native courts with their Blake work. But the native courts must choose in to take part.
“There are places where the court and the prosecutor have kind of taken the attitude of, well, if people show up and file that motion to vacate, and they go through the legal process to file the appropriate paperwork and serve it appropriately, or whatever their process might be locally, well then we’ll put it on for a hearing,” Johnson mentioned. “But people have to come out and do it proactively themselves.”
A proactive method in Tukwila
Shortly after the Supreme Court launched its Blake choice, LaTricia Kinlow, the judicial department administrator for the Tukwila Municipal Court, obtained straight to work.
She employed three summer season interns to assist the court docket work on its almost 1,000 Blake circumstances. She mentioned it was vital to her and Judge Kimberly Walden to do the work swiftly.
“We know what these cases did to the marginalized community,” Kinlow mentioned. “We know the impact of having those types of charges on your criminal history, how it blocks you from a lot of opportunities.”
In Tukwila, an individual didn’t have to seem for his or her vacating listening to, as is necessary in different courts. The court docket despatched out notices to individuals’s final identified addresses, but when they didn’t present up in particular person, it didn’t delay the method.
Kinlow mentioned that some individuals referred to as the court docket upset, questioning why they had been getting a court docket summons so lengthy after their conviction. When they realized that their conviction was going to be vacated and that they might get a refund for any court docket fines or charges, she mentioned their tone swiftly shifted. “People would be elated,” Kinlow recalled.
She mentioned it wasn’t unusual for Judge Walden to be moved to tears after a Blake listening to. “We don’t always have an opportunity to refund money or to vacate cases, and so it was a very rewarding experience,” Kinlow mentioned.
She sees it as a part of a nationwide development of courts focusing extra on restorative justice practices.
“You can do that and still hold people accountable,” Kinlow mentioned. “So when the [state Supreme] Court finds that we are doing something wrong, then I think we have an even greater responsibility to right the wrong.”
Other courts see it in a different way, she mentioned.
“You have some courts, in my humble opinion, that aren’t processing them because they just don’t want to,” she mentioned. “It’s not that they can’t, they have chosen to take a position.”
At the Renton Municipal Court, instantly adjoining to Tukwila, judicial officers have solely despatched out seven out of the 1,514 eligible circumstances to the state’s Refund Bureau, in line with state information.
The court docket administrator in Renton Municipal Court, Yanna Filippidis, declined an interview request and wrote in an electronic mail that the court docket’s two judges wouldn’t touch upon their Blake course of. In a written assertion supplied by a metropolis spokesperson, Renton’s metropolis legal professional wrote that defendants can provoke the method to vacate misdemeanor hashish costs on their very own, however that the court docket doesn’t have the authority to regardless of the excessive court docket ruling.
“Neither the judges nor the prosecutors see it as appropriate to sua sponte [without request from those with the potentially eligible convictions] move to vacate past misdemeanor convictions,” Shane Moloney, the Renton metropolis legal professional, wrote in an electronic mail.
“Unlike felony convictions of the same statute addressed by Blake, there is some legal uncertainty on how far the Blake decision extends to misdemeanor convictions identified by the [Administrative Office of the Courts] as ‘potentially’ eligible for vacation,” he added.
It’s a reasoning that Johnson has heard from judges and prosecutors all through the method.
“Most judges think, ‘I’m not ethically allowed to do this,’” Johnson mentioned, given their impartial position in a court docket case. “But this isn’t a legal issue to battle out like there are two sides,” she mentioned. “The Supreme Court already decided.”
‘It’s nonetheless going to take years’
“I joke that if I were to get another dog, I’d probably name it Blake,” she mentioned. “This is pretty much all I’ve done.”
North mentioned the state excessive court docket’s choice took many prosecutors abruptly. “No one in the prosecuting sphere was overly happy with the decision just on the basis that there was a lot of work to be done,” she mentioned.
But she was proud that Pierce County determined to take a proactive method. First, they labored to determine who was being held in jail on these costs and filed emergency orders for his or her launch. Then, they regarded for circumstances the place an individual was being charged, or if there was an open bench warrant that would result in an arrest.
“There wasn’t a master list across the state of who is being held on these charges. So it’s been a learning process,” she mentioned.
Since then, they’ve been tackling their most up-to-date circumstances and dealing their means backward. “Our experience has been that the more recent the conviction, the more likely it is affecting that person,” she defined.
North mentioned their court docket has been working a bit slower than some others as a result of they aren’t simply circumstances the place the one cost was a Blake-eligible cost. “We’re going through every case, so even if there’s like an assault on the case, we’re going through and vacating the (unlawful possession of a controlled substance) charge, which makes it a little more complicated,” she added.
Their purpose has been to do all steps without delay, together with resentencing, vacating and the refund course of. “Our orders probably have two or three more steps than some other counties, but our idea is to do it once, do it correctly and don’t touch it again,” she mentioned.
For North, probably the most rewarding half has been with the ability to give individuals a second likelihood.
“Oftentimes, on our side, we put people in [prison], and we don’t often get to see where they are at the halfway point or what progress they’ve made,” she mentioned.
But the method hasn’t come with out ache. “Some of these cases are worst-case scenarios, like rape of a child in the first degree, and they get resentenced because they had a single Blake conviction on their record,” North mentioned. “It’s understandably difficult for family members to get.”
She mentioned the resentencing hearings for these extra severe circumstances will be particularly troublesome for victims.
“They’re talking about all the good things they’ve done in prison, how they’ve matured and grown over five to 10 to 15 years, how they’ve improved,” North mentioned. “Oftentimes, the sufferer’s households are simply sitting there desirous about all of the ways in which their lives have gotten worse over the 15 years as a result of their member of the family is useless or they have been maimed or one thing traumatic occurred to them.”
“I think that’s the part that sometimes gets lost in all the good things that [the Blake] decision might have done,” North mentioned.
In the primary few years, her workplace was doing 10 to fifteen resentencing hearings per week. Today, they’ve one or two a month. The majority of the work now could be easy vacates. But the additional they get in time, the tougher it’s to determine eligible Blake circumstances. For any circumstances earlier than 1990, the paper information are stored off-site in packing containers. Currently, they’re engaged on circumstances from 2006.
Each court docket has confronted distinctive challenges in accessing its older information. For instance, some courts couldn’t simply entry court docket information from the ’70s and ’80s as a result of they had been saved on small clear movie strips that would solely be considered utilizing an old-school microfiche reader. Others have struggled with employees capability.
“In smaller counties, I don’t doubt (they) struggle to have enough people to get this work done,” North mentioned. “We’re big enough that I can dedicate a lot of time to this, but other counties I know struggle to get enough prosecutors to do the active work of cases that are coming in, let alone going back in the record and doing this.”
Since Pierce County began its Blake work, North estimates that the court docket has vacated between 12,000 and 15,000 eligible circumstances. She estimates they’ve about 30,000 circumstances in whole. They’ve been capable of expedite the method as a result of the protection and prosecution are working collaboratively—which isn’t all the time the case in different courts.
“I literally print out a stack of like 150 to 200 [vacate orders] at a time, and I sign them all, and I hand the whole stack to the defense attorney, and he goes through and signs them,” North mentioned. “So that way, both of us have looked at the order.”
The course of has pressured either side to place apart their adversarial nature. “That being said, once we get into the resentencing, that’s where the gloves are off and we become adversaries again,” she added.
Even given their collaborative method, they nonetheless have a protracted solution to go.
“Even if all of us are working at our absolute maximum capacity together, it’s still going to take years,” North mentioned.
Advocates say extra outreach wanted
When Giap’s drug possession conviction was faraway from her felony document, she mentioned it helped her shut that chapter in her life.
“It helped me a lot in the sense of just knowing, like, hey, I made some poor decisions in the past, but I’ve done really well at just reestablishing myself, surrounding myself with good folks, and I want the same opportunities as other people have,” she mentioned.
She now helps others do the identical as a authorized empowerment navigator with Living with Conviction.
The group has a hotline that anybody can name to ask questions associated to Blake and to get assist initiating the method. Having somebody on the road who’s been of their footwear helps ease nervousness for individuals who have trauma associated to the courts, she mentioned.
The group has partnered with others to provide shows at group occasions, establishing tables at Juneteenth festivals and Indigenous useful resource gala’s. They’ve attended drug remedy useful resource gala’s and group faculty occasions, and have completed outreach in prisons to ensure individuals find out about State v. Blake, in line with Espinosa, the manager director of Living with Conviction
But nonetheless, so many individuals she speaks with, even these working inside the system, don’t know in regards to the State v. Blake ruling.
“I wish the Legislature would have earmarked funding for a statewide communication campaign,” Espinosa mentioned. “Those convictions, and the prices concerned, will be debilitating and hold individuals shackled to the felony justice system.
“There’s still a lot of work to do,” she added.
This story was first printed by InvestigateWest (investigatewest.org), an unbiased information nonprofit devoted to investigative journalism within the Pacific Northwest. Visit investigatewest.org/newsletters to enroll in weekly updates.
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