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MISSOURI COURTS ASK FOR $3.7 MILLION TO CONTINUE EXPUNGING PAST MARIJUANA
CONVICTIONS
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POLITICS
MISSOURI COURTS ASK FOR $3.7 MILLION TO CONTINUE EXPUNGING PAST MARIJUANA
CONVICTIONS
Published
6 hours ago
on
January 18, 2024
By
Marijuana Moment
“I have not done any kind of research to see how far along we are. We just
continue to do it every day.”
By Rebecca Rivas, Missouri Independent
Missouri circuit courts have cleared more than 100,000 marijuana charges from
people’s criminal records so far—a mandate that was a big selling point for
those who voted to pass the constitutional amendment that legalized recreational
marijuana in 2022.
Virginia senator introduces new bill, pushing for recreational marijuana sales
Virginia senator introduces new bill, pushing for recreational marijuana sales
While the sale of recreational marijuana is now legal in the Commonwealth,
Virginia has effectively upheld a prohibition on purchasing by sidestepping any
opportunity to develop a market for retail sales.
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However, court officials say it’s hard to determine how many more charges are
left because many court records are not digitized.
Missouri court officials are set to request another $3.7 million to complete
marijuana expungements in the coming budget year, making their case Wednesday to
a House appropriations committee.
By law, any revenue the state collects from taxes on recreational marijuana
sales, along with fees the businesses pay, must first go towards the state’s
costs of regulating the program. Then it goes to expenses incurred by the court
system for expunging certain marijuana offenses from people’s criminal records.
Last year lawmakers signed off on $4.5 million for state courts to pay their
employees overtime or to hire temp workers to complete the massive number of
expungements required by law. They approved an additional $2.5 million in a
supplemental budget on May 5.
Circuit courts must request funds to reimburse their expenses for completing
expungements from the Circuit Court Budget Committee, which oversees the special
assistance program.
So far, the committee has given $4.2 million to the county courts, said Beth
Riggert, communications counsel of the Missouri Supreme Court. And the committee
has allocated the funds to any circuit court that has requested it, she said.
“Some circuit courts have advised they have not requested special assistance
funds because they did not have current court clerks willing or able to work
overtime,” Riggert said, “and/or have been unable to find qualified individuals
to provide special assistance because the analysis required is complicated and
better done by experienced personnel, such as retired clerks.”
As of January 2, Missouri courts have granted 103,558 expungements. Out of all
the counties, Greene County has received the most funding, nearly $940,000, and
has completed the most expungements at 4,306.
After Greene, the counties that have completed the most expungements are not
necessarily the largest counties or the ones that have received the most money.
The second highest number is 3,515 from Laclede County, which has a population
of 36,000. The county has received a little more than $35,000 from the special
assistance program.
In third place is St. Louis County, the state’s largest county with more than a
million people, where court officials have processed 3,479 expungements. The
county has received just over $135,000. The court has reviewed 11,300 files, a
spokesman for the 21st Circuit Court said.
Franklin County, which has a population of 104,000, is fourth, completing 3,200
expungements and receiving about $53,000. Franklin is just ahead of Jackson
County, which has a population of 717,000. Jackson has completed 2,900 and
received nearly $195,000.
How far along are the courts?
Greene County Circuit Clerk Bryan Feemster said he brought on four experienced
retired clerks in February to work part-time on expungements and, “they hit the
ground running.” Their work has been guided by a list of pre-screened cases,
compiled by the Office of State Court Administrator.
The office searched for several criminal charge codes that potentially could
involve marijuana and provided that list to the courts. The clerks must read
through each case on the list thoroughly, he said.
“You have to look at every count in the case and see whether it actually had to
do with marijuana or not,” he said.
Feemster submits timesheets and supporting documentation to the office, which
then provides payment to employees on their paychecks for the expungement work.
He’s hired additional two people to embark on the heavy lifting of paper boxes
and going through thousands of paper files that can’t be pre-screened by the
state. Those six clerks are dedicated to expungements.
“They don’t do anything else,” he said.
During the 2022 campaign in support of the recreational marijuana ballot
measure, supporters touted “automatic expungements”—meaning people who have
already served their sentences for past charges don’t have to petition the court
and go through a hearing to expunge those charges from their records.
The courts must locate their records and make it as if their past marijuana
charges never existed.
However, court clerks say the process is far from automatic. It’s a
labor-intensive process that requires someone with legal experience to look
through court files.
And that’s particularly the case with paper records, Feemster said, because it’s
all manual.
“From 1989 back, we’re going through every single criminal record to find out
whether there’s something in there that might qualify,” he said. “And it is, as
you might imagine, very slow and tedious.”
While Greene County has a team of retired clerks who Feemster was able to
recruit, other county clerks say they have one or two extra people helping
complete the task.
Marcy Anderson was appointed to serve as Johnson County’s circuit clerk in July,
and she inherited the expungement task. She said she has a judge and a retired
clerk who come to help out as often as they can, in addition to what her regular
team can accomplish.
“I have not done any kind of research to see how far along we are,” Anderson
said. “We just continue to do it every day.”
Johnson County has a population of 54,000, and her team has completed 529
expungements, as of January 2, receiving nearly $18,000 from the special
assistance program.
However her office, like every other county statewide, is simultaneously working
on a large redacting project that’s required now that people can access court
records on CaseNet.
Both the redacting and expungement processes require extra help that she
currently doesn’t have, but “more funds and more people” would be helpful.
In Jackson County, court clerks have reviewed more than 20,000 files that
include both felony and misdemeanor drug charges, said Valerie Hartman,
spokeswoman for the 16th Judicial Circuit Court. The court has expunged nearly
3,000 charges.
Some of those cases reviewed were related to marijuana, but many were not, she
said.
The court reviewed cases from 1989 through 2022 using data provided by the
Office of State Courts Administrator, the Missouri Corrections Department and
the Missouri State Highway Patrol, she said. All files that contained drug
charges were included in the review.
Now the court is researching how to access old criminal databases, in order to
identify and review additional paper case files, Hartman said.
“We have no information,” she said, “nor an estimate on how many additional drug
cases await our review.”
This story was first published by Missouri Independent.
> Almost Half Of Missouri’s Marijuana Social Equity Business License Applicants
> Live Outside The State
Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.
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