| NEWS | Clean Slate Maricopa County has petitioned to expunge 10,000 pot charges. BY KATYA SCHWENK I n Maricopa County, more than 10,000 people once convicted of low- level pot offenses have now had their records cleared. Proposition 207, the ballot initia- tive that legalized recreational cannabis in the state of Arizona, set the expungement process into motion when it passed in November 2020. Since July 2021, anyone in Arizona with a qualifying pot charge has been eligible to petition the courts to scrub it from their record. Maricopa County prosecutors — once hard-lined in their treatment of low-level pot offenders — have cleared many of these cases. Over the last seven months, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office announced last week, the agency has filed 10,607 petitions to expunge prior pot charges. Attorneys have been filing around 500 petitions a week, according to the office. By law, courts are directed to grant these expungement petitions after 30 days, unless Maricopa County prosecutors were to reverse course and challenge petitions they had already filed. This means that it’s a “very fair assump- tion” that all 10,000 petitions have been, or soon will be, granted, said Julie Gunnigle, an attorney and advocate who has worked on expungement clinics around the state. “Maricopa judges are not giving pushback on these,” she said. Still, advocates say, this is just a dent in the number of people who are eligible to clear their names. And they worry that, even in Maricopa County, some are slip- ping through the cracks. The county is “being incredibly proac- tive,” said Mike Robinette, the executive director of Southern Arizona NORML, a cannabis and justice advocacy organiza- tion. “And it’s great that they are now at 10,000 cases.” But that number is likely just a drop in the bucket, according to Robinette. “We’re still not reaching the majority of people who are eligible for expungements,” he said. Most estimates by experts put the number of eligible people, statewide, in the hundreds of thousands. Given its popula- tion, Maricopa County is expected to make up the lion’s share of those cases. For advocates, the task now is to try and reach them. One recent Tuesday afternoon, dozens filed into the Burton Barr Central Library in Katya Schwenk “I feel happy, I feel clear,” said Nelson Thomas, who had been given a felony charge and two years of probation for simple possession. Phoenix to learn how to clear their records. The Arizona Marijuana Expungement Coalition, a project funded by the Arizona Department of Health Services, held a workshop there on expungements. The coalition holds such workshops around the state, providing the legal resources often needed to file expungement petitions. One attendee was Nelson Thomas, a photographer and current student at Glendale Community College. In 2018, he told Phoenix New Times, a minor traffic stop had turned into a nightmare when the officer found a small amount of weed in his car. He was given a felony charge and two years of probation, he said. “I felt like it was the city just trying to squeeze some money out of me,” he said. “Like, I already ain’t got no money. “I definitely feel a whole lot better moving forward,” Thomas added. “I feel happy. I feel clear.” Clearing old pot charges can have a major impact on people’s lives, said Martin Hutchins Jr., the marijuana expungement litigation manager with the Arizona Justice Project, one of seven organizations that form part of the state’s coalition. Hutchins said he had spoken with people who had been kept from jobs, from housing, and from tuition aid due to a prior pot felony charge. It was “so crucial,” he said, to allow people to clear their names. Hutchins is glad Maricopa County is being proactive. “They have a much greater ability to identify people, at a faster rate,” he said. “We look forward to more counties taking advantage of that aspect of the law so we can see even more people benefiting from expungement.” Prop 207 allows individuals to petition to expunge their cases and enables prose- cutors to proactively scrub records clean — which is what prosecutors have been doing in Maricopa County. By statute, once a petition to expunge a charge is submitted, the original prosecuting agency has 30 days to challenge. Unless prosecutors provide “clear and convincing” evidence that the charges are not >> p 13 11 phoenixnewtimes.com | CONTENTS | FEEDBACK | OPINION | NEWS | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | PHOENIX NEW TIMES MARCH 24TH– MARCH 30TH, 2022
