Past marijuana convictions will be reviewed and either expunged or reduced under a bill passed Wednesday by the California Senate.
State senators voted 28-10 in support of Assembly Bill 1793, sending the bill to Gov. Jerry Brown in light of clearing the legislature’s lower house earlier this year with similar success.
If signed into law by Mr. Brown, a Democrat, state prosecutors would be required to examine and then retroactively erase or abridge marijuana convictions handed down prior to Californians voting to legalize the plant in 2016, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of people previously charged with cannabis-related felonies and misdemeanors.
A representative for the governor’s office did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
In addition to legalizing recreational marijuana and paving the way for retail sales, passage of Proposition 64 in 2016 also allowed Californians to petition the courts to have past cannabis convictions removed from their records.
Police in California made nearly 500,000 marijuana-related arrests between 2006 and 2015, but fewer than 5,000 people eligible to have their records modified or reduced had successfully petitioned prosecutors as of last fall, according to the Drug Policy Alliance.
If signed into law, A.B. 1793 will require that the California Department of Justice compiles a list of eligible cases to be sent to the appropriate district attorney’s office for review, lessening the complicated and sometimes costly legal strain currently involved with petitioning past convictions.
“The role of government should be to ease burdens and expedite the operation of law — not create unneeded obstacles, barriers and delay. This is a practical, common sense bill,” Assembly member Rob Bonta, a Democrat who introduced the bill, said previously. “These individuals are legally-entitled to expungement or reduction and a fresh start. It should be implemented without unnecessary delay or burden.”
California became the first state in the country to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, paving the path for 29 states and the nation’s capital to follow suit in spite of the plant’s status as a federally outlawed Schedule 1 substance.
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