Posted on 01/31/2019 3:16:24 PM PST by Olog-hai
Baltimore’s top prosecutor has filed a rarely used legal petition intended to vacate 3,778 convictions for possession of marijuana, arguing an extraordinary legal strategy is necessary to “right an extraordinary wrong.”
In a highly unusual “Maryland v. Maryland” filing in state court, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby used a petition called “writ of error coram nobis” that allows a court to reopen cases when substantial error is found that wasn’t apparent in initial judgments. The petition, if granted, could wipe out thousands of pot possession convictions.
Mosby’s arguments are based on what she paints as an opportunity to achieve retroactive justice by acknowledging racial disparities in how pot possession cases over years were policed and prosecuted in Baltimore, a city under a federal oversight program due to discriminatory and unconstitutional policing.
“The sordid history of marijuana prohibition lies in ethnic and racial bigotry,” she writes in the filing, which notes that racial disparities in possession arrests continue to exist in majority-black Baltimore even after Maryland’s 2014 decriminalization of amounts less than 10 grams. …
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
I don't think Baltimore has had a Republican mayor since the 1950s.
The corollary is that with 10 states legalized, and about the same number decriminalized to a ticket, we have a serious imbalance and looming 4A/10A/14A constitutional problem in the US ... not a choom fan, but if this was alcohol, and patchwork legality with possessors going to jail for years in one state (say, South Bend), and 6 miles over the border (say, Niles MI), drink up? Or a short bridge between Ontario, OR (drink) and Payette/Ingard/Fruitland, ID (dry)?
If its arrests for small amounts, I’m OK with it. But she’d get a lot more mileage out of what she did if she didn’t play the “blame the man” and oppression game in doign this.
As someone who was sentenced to five years in prison back in 1960s Texas (indictment later dismissed) for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana, first time offender, something that is a misdemeanor today, if a crime at all, I applaud the decision.
Sorry, that the price we ALL pay for compromising and not doing the right thing. I get what you’re saying, and the pragamatism behind it, but if they rape or rob, DO YOUR DAMNED JOB AND PROVE IT I say to those ‘prosecutors’. If the person is a violent criminal then their record should show that.
Public officials that take the easy way out, heck, any of us that take the easy way out, trade immediate, but WRONG solutions for much more trouble down the line.
Screw plea bargains, cops and DAs should do their damned job.
so YES, if my tax dollars are going to go for anything, then they should go for putting violent thugs in jail for violent crimes.
As someone who was sentenced to five years in prison back in 1960s Texas (indictment later dismissed) for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana, first time offender, something that is a misdemeanor today, if a crime at all, I applaud the decision.
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Shoot me the county and docket number. Id like to look that up.
You a funny guy. What makes you think I have any
information like that from fifty years ago?
Im not being funny. All of my paroles know or know how to find their docket. You did five years custody for FOA possession (THC) and managed to get an acquittal? Im actually sympathetic towards you and your case and was interested in the details. But, whatever.
You misunderstand. I was sentenced to five years by a jury. I had pled guilty and asked for a jury to set the sentence. Big mistake. My lawyer was horrible and the judge saw it.
He replaced the jury sentence with ten years probation, which I was let out from after a couple of years. On release, my indictment was set aside.
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