N.J. automatically expunged 360K marijuana cases this summer. There could be more to come.

Authored by nj.com and submitted by CannabisHub

EDITOR’S NOTE: NJ Cannabis Insider is hosting an in-person day-long conference and networking event Sept. 23 at the Carteret Performing Arts Center, featuring many of the state’s leading power players. Tickets are limited.

New Jersey courts have expunged 362,000 low-level marijuana cases, clearing a massive amount of criminal records in just two months.

The state Judiciary had estimated some 360,000 cases qualified for automatic expungement following the passage of the marijuana decriminalization law, which did away with fines and penalties for possessing and selling small amounts of weed. The judiciary began vacating and dismissing cases in July, and then expunged them, a step that ultimately clears a person’s record.

There could be another 125,000 to 150,000 potential marijuana expungements for the courts to complete automatically, said MaryAnn Spoto, a spokeswoman for the Judiciary. People with marijuana cases that were not automatically expunged can file a motion for review with the court.

Without expungements, people can struggle to get jobs, housing and financial aid for school due to past criminal records.

A state Supreme Court order issued this summer laid out the new, automated process for vacating, dismissing and expunging certain marijuana offenses from people’s records. The eligible charges include possession of marijuana and selling less than one ounce, as well as related crimes like possession of drug paraphernalia, being under the influence, failing to turn over marijuana or being or possessing marijuana while in a vehicle.

Michael Hoffman, a defense attorney in Vineland, said the charges expunged do not include those tied to criminal offenses outside of the order. So, a person charged with a marijuana offense alongside traffic violations or other crimes will have their cases kept on the on record for now.

He also said the system leaves many questioning if their cases were expunged, and called the process to obtain a certificate confirming expungements “convoluted.”

“In a COVID world, they created a brand-new process that requires you to appear in person and present photo identification,” he said. “That’s just to determine if you were subject to and got the benefit of automatic expungement.”

To help those with past marijuana charges, 420NJEvents is hosting a clinic on Sept. 14 offering free legal help, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Doubletree by Hilton Penn Station Hotel in Newark.

“Why should some people have their lives ruined, while others are getting rich in the industry?” Brendon Robinson, co-founder and vice president of 420NJEvents, said in a statement. “This clinic will give people an opportunity to have a life after cannabis. No longer will low-level cannabis crimes ruin someone’s life.”

It will feature attorneys from Brach Eichler who can provide expertise to those seeking conviction relief.

“Our target audience is folks who are hopefully going to benefit from the automatic expungement,” said Charles Gormally, co-chair of the cannabis practice at Brach Eichler. “But we’re practical enough to know that we’re going to find folks along the way with other offenses that we’re going to help people get expunged.”

Gormally said attorneys will help those who do qualify for expungements file for paperwork confirming their records have been cleared, so they can make sure they were captured in the automatic process and did not fall through the cracks. But they’ll also help people who do not meet the criteria for the automatic process to file traditional expungements.

That process can be daunting. It takes more than a year for most people to expunge their records, and doing it without legal help proves difficult to impossible.

Attorneys remain concerned about people who pleaded guilty to reduced charges (like loitering in a known drug zone) to avoid fines associated with their initial marijuana offenses. Because the charges were changed, they aren’t captured in the process automatically.

“There should be upwards of millions of cases,” said Chirali Patel, an attorney with Pashman Stein Walder Hayden. She said she hopes the state re-examines those cases and finds a way to clear them, too.

But she also praised the progress made in clearing the records and by the Cannabis Regulatory Commission, which last month unveiled its social-equity focused rules to steer New Jersey’s legal weed market.

“Decriminalization and legalization are trying to work hand-in-hand,” Patel said. “Of course, this is just one step. Dealing with the collateral damage of having had a record — it still prevented them from so much. They’re finally getting to be getting to the startling line.”

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Amanda Hoover may be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @amandahoovernj.

Dot_Classic on September 14th, 2021 at 21:34 UTC »

The tax money we have wasted prosecuting and jailing marijuana offenses is deeply disturbing to think about.

JTuck333 on September 14th, 2021 at 18:42 UTC »

Does this include those who plead down to marijuana?

PuzzleheadedHotel254 on September 14th, 2021 at 18:06 UTC »

Good.