Baltimore prosecutor files petition to erase pot convictions

Source: Associated Press


David Mcfadden, Associated Press
Updated 7:01 pm CST, Thursday, January 31, 2019

BALTIMORE (AP) — 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.

Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Baltimore-prosecutor-files-petition-to-erase-pot-13578011.php