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weed legalization and past charges

Wolfmans_BrothEr

Wolfmans_BrothEr

Bluelighter
Joined
Apr 23, 2011
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903
me and a fellow mod got on the subject of weed legalization like the cliched drug addicts we are

anyway i wondered what would happen to my posession charge if weed is ever federally legalized

like right now i have felony posession, would that just get dropped if our govt chooses to legalize herb? wouldnt it b contradictory if they didnt drop it?

or mayb since its a felony it wont but would a lesser charge like a misdemeanor be dropped?

no legal discussion anymore so i brought it here
 
No, it won't be dropped. It was illegal when the person was arrested for it, and it's illegal for Congress to pass any ex post facto laws (that is, a law that retroactively changes the legal status of actions committed in the past.) They can change the legal status of certain actions committed in the present and future of the passing of new legislation, but they can't retroactively change the consequences of actions taken that were deemed illegal at the time.


I could see the possibility of pardons, but the one act of legalization will not make your past legal troubles vanish from your record.



[EDIT: I was thinking about this a bit more and thought of an interesting scenario. What if a person was arrested for possession of less than 28.oz of marijuana and currently incarcerated in, say, Colorado when the state decriminalized his arresting offense. I'd like to think that the person would be let free immediately when the new laws took effect, though I still don't imagine anything being erased from his record. Anybody know of any precedent for this hypothetical situation?]
 
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I don't think they will. The same way that if something became illegal, I doubt the people who were doing it before it was illegal would be put into jail and/or get a record.
 
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