PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "In 2018, under former Gov. Jerry Brown, the state approved AB 1793 to help speed up the process by automating it and requiring courts to identify all eligible cannabis-related records and seal them, removing the onus to do so from affected people who may not even know they are eligible. Rollout of AB 1793 was uneven, however, and many local agencies delayed the process as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted court proceedings across the state. To get the effort moving again, in 2019, Ting’s bill automated expungements for eligible arrests and convictions and expanded eligibility to every misdemeanor – not just those related to cannabis – so long as the arrest didn’t result in a prison sentence and if the person completed their sentence."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "In addition, lawmakers in 2022 passed another bill, SB 731, which creates a pathway to sealing records for a much wider range of criminal convictions beyond cannabis, excluding sex offenses. Under that bill, a person can apply to seal their records within four years of completing a sentence, as long as they don’t have a new arrest. Some agencies like schools and police, however, can still access the criminal history, but it would not show up in regular background checks. “California laws that prevent people living with a past conviction or arrest record from positively contributing to our communities make us all less safe,” Ting said."
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STORY: "Millions of Criminal Records Cleared After Landmark California Law Takes Effect," by Reporter Sydney Johnson, published by KQED, (Sydney Johnson is a reporter at KQED. She previously reported on public health and city government at the San Francisco Examiner, and before that, she covered statewide education policy for EdSource. Her reporting has won multiple local, state and national awards. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and lives in San Francisco.)
GIST: "More than 11 million arrest and conviction records have been wiped clean in the first six months of the implementation of a new California law, marking the largest expungement over that time period in the country’s history.
The mass expungement follows the years-long effort by lawmakers and voters dating back to 2016 — when marijuana was legalized in the state — to clear certain criminal records and open up employment and housing opportunities for Californians.
“After someone has completed their sentence and paid their debts, we cannot continue to allow old legal records to create barriers to opportunity that destabilize families, undermine our economy, and worsen racial injustices,” Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) said in a press statement.
Ting authored AB 1076, a 2019 law which requires the state’s Dept. of Justice to review and automatically clear certain non-serious offense records for people who already completed their sentence or diversion program, or if their arrest did not lead to a conviction.
Expungements of records under the law began a year ago. Between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2022, more than 8.4 million arrests that never resulted in a conviction were cleared from Californians’ records, according to the latest relief data from the DOJ (PDF). More than 2.6 million conviction records were also expunged during the same time period.
“We have over 58 million records that represent 6 to 7 million people in California that just weren’t getting their records expunged,” Jay Jordan, CEO of the Alliance for Safety and Justice, a public safety advocacy organization, told KQED. “As a result, they couldn’t find good-paying jobs, they couldn’t get apartments, and they couldn’t do things like coach their kid’s Little League teams.”
In 2016, California voters approved Proposition 64, which legalized cannabis and required the state to expunge prior cannabis-related records that were no longer considered criminal.
But while cannabis sales and businesses were quick to boom after legalization, expungement for prior convictions was slow because the process largely fell on individuals to do the work of determining whether they are eligible and bringing their case up for review.
Individuals who wanted to expunge an arrest or a completed sentence from their record typically would have to go to court, fill out a CR-180 form to apply for dismissal, pay around $125, coordinate with the district attorney’s office, then be granted a court date for when their case could be reviewed.
“People didn’t have the time or money to do it,” said Jordan.
‘California laws that prevent people living with a past conviction or arrest record from positively contributing to our communities make us all less safe.’Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco)
In 2018, under former Gov. Jerry Brown, the state approved AB 1793 to help speed up the process by automating it and requiring courts to identify all eligible cannabis-related records and seal them, removing the onus to do so from affected people who may not even know they are eligible. Rollout of AB 1793 was uneven, however, and many local agencies delayed the process as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted court proceedings across the state.
To get the effort moving again, in 2019, Ting’s bill automated expungements for eligible arrests and convictions and expanded eligibility to every misdemeanor – not just those related to cannabis – so long as the arrest didn’t result in a prison sentence and if the person completed their sentence.
The DOJ, along with the nonprofit Code for America, created an automated system that started expunging records on July 1, 2022. That will now continue on a rolling basis.
Specifically for cannabis-related sentences, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1706 in Sept. 2022, which required counties and courts to seal eligible cannabis-related records if they had not been challenged by March 2023.
Bay Area counties such as San Francisco, San Mateo and Sonoma had sealed nearly all of those records that were found to be eligible as of April 6, 2023, according to a June report from the DOJ (PDF). Others, like Contra Costa and Alameda counties, have a higher proportion of cases to get through.
The DOJ report showed a racial equity gap among people who are relieved from their past cannabis-related arrests or sentences under AB 1706. More white men have been both found eligible and granted relief, compared with Hispanic, Black, Asian or other racial groups, according to the DOJ report.
In addition, lawmakers in 2022 passed another bill, SB 731, which creates a pathway to sealing records for a much wider range of criminal convictions beyond cannabis, excluding sex offenses.
Under that bill, a person can apply to seal their records within four years of completing a sentence, as long as they don’t have a new arrest.
Some agencies like schools and police, however, can still access the criminal history, but it would not show up in regular background checks.
“California laws that prevent people living with a past conviction or arrest record from positively contributing to our communities make us all less safe,” Ting said.""
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
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