Bronx DA has just dismissed over 6,000 cases of weed, two months after being legalized

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The Bronx was just the third New York borough to remove thousands of minor cannabis offenses from the record books two months after New York State legalized adult cannabis.

Late last week, at the request of District Attorney Darcel Clark, Judge George Grasso, senior oversight judge at the Bronx Criminal Court, dismissed over 6,000 pending marijuana charges. These cases all concerned the sale or possession of marijuana and included a mix of pending cases and cases in which the defendant pleaded guilty. Each case was not only dismissed but also withdrawn from public scrutiny.

“My office long stopped prosecuting these crimes because they did not pose a direct threat to public safety, and they gave people a criminal record that had negative side effects on employment, housing, education, immigration and other affairs,” DA said Clark in court, according to the New York Daily News. “In view of these harsh realities for those affected, our motion today is an effort to realize the common purpose of my office, to pursue justice with integrity, which is linked to the legislative goals described above.”

Judge Grasso agreed with Clark’s opinion, noting that cannabis prohibition laws have “led to devastating side effects, including mass incarceration and other complex generational trauma that hinder an otherwise law-abiding citizen’s access to housing, employment and other services.”

Grasso dismissed a total of 6,089 offenses, including 2,441 subpoenas, 1,998 pending cases with 1,974 pending arrest warrants and a further 1,650 cases in which the defendant is still serving a sentence. The judge ordered the court to dismiss and seal each and every one of these cases within the next 90 days.

Clark stated that these cases will be completely removed from the criminal records of former offenders. “So if you apply for a job now, you no longer have to state that you have a criminal record,” reports Bronx News 12. “If you apply for work, housing, immigration, all of these consequences have criminal convictions.”

Although the Bronx waited for New York State to legalize cannabis to dismiss these cases, Manhattan and Brooklyn made similar applications years ago. In 2018, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance cleared over 3,000 marijuana arrest warrants and Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez cleared more than 1,400 offenses in his district. Staten Island prosecutor Michael McMahon said he has started the process to set over 1,100 weed cases, but Queens prosecutor Melinda Katz has made only a vague promise to erase previous cannabis convictions.

New York state also overturned over 25,000 convictions for cannabis possession and use in 2019 under a statewide decriminalization bill. This year’s full legalization law will also provide a path for more automated weed crime removal. And now that it is legal for New Yorkers to take up to three ounces of weed and smoke anywhere tobacco use is permitted, the NYPD is finally being forced to end its racist enforcement of outdated prohibition laws.