Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.
...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).
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Date has been screwy lately due to reporting issues, but 2019 FBI data says there were 1.5 million arrests for drug abuse violations, and about 480,000 arrests were just for marijuana possession. In my experience cops don't tend to be shy about upgrading to distribution charges, so presumably if someone was dealing they'd get arrested for dealing rather than just possession. I have no idea how many of half million people arrested were actually sent to jail, how many were subsequently convicted, or how many had a clean record (why is this relevant?). Still, that is a remarkable sample size to draw from.
I've known a handful of people who have been arrested for marijuana possession, and not a single one has spent more than a few hours in a cell. The one guy in college who had "distribution" amounts got some community service and a few years of probation, for everyone else it was a fine.
I have heard many times that drugs are an easy way to get someone to plea, instead of having to go with some harder to prove charge. Similarly, I've known a dealer who was released with some fines/probation repeatedly, paired with escalating threats that he was running out of chances and needed to turn his life around. Basically, I think many of us assume the courts treat "normal taxpayer who smokes weed sometimes" differently than a known public nuisance.
I know that this is moving the goalposts, but even with little to no jail time an arrest and drug conviction can absolutely derail a person's life. A felony conviction will cost you several rights off the bat like the right to vote, own a firearm, and serve on a jury. Careers in government and health care will be permanently off limits as well. Most other traditional, high paying careers will become vastly more challenging to pursue as will renting a place to live (background checks are routine). Needless to say if you ever interact with the justice system again, e.g. in a child custody case, criminal convictions will be held against you.
All that is to say that just because someone isn't sitting behind bars doesn't mean that they aren't being punished.
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I don't have any reason to doubt the specific cases you're familiar with, but we're still working with a pool of half a million arrests. A third of all drug arrests are just for marijuana possession, so it's a bit wild to claim that "no one is actually going to jail for smoking weed". I'd need to see way more systemic evidence before that claim starts to approach plausibility.
We know that Biden's recent pardon freed no one, which is a bit of evidence that should have shifted everyone's priors toward no one goes to jail for simple possession.
Complicating that is that Biden’s executive order only applied to federal prisoners, 90% of marijuana cases are outside of federal jurisdiction, and the states we’d expect to have lots of people in jail for possession are tough on crime red states that told Biden no.
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The effects of the Biden pardon are not surprising. The people who get dinged for marijuana possession at the federal level are basically only people unlucky enough to blunder into an arrest on federal property (national parks, VA hospital, etc.) and unlucky enough to have a misdemeanor US attorney who somehow gives a shit. Worst case scenario they'll spend a few weeks in US Marshal custody and get released. Not enough to register as a blip.
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Fair, anecdotes and all that. But arrests != charges, much less jail time. As a more general proxy point, Biden's recent pardoning of all federal marijuana possession charges did not release a single prisoner.
You're a defense attorney - have you ever seen a person get jail time for just possession?
No, but that's because weed is legal in my state and also because the prosecutors eventually stopped trying to prosecute possession of any drugs because of constant jury nullification torpedoes. The only time I encountered it was this guy that had an out-of-state extradition warrant for marijuana possession (I checked). He waited a few weeks for the state to transport him, and iirc spent 4 months in jail for that. So that's a n of one guy who went to jail for weed possession I'm aware of.
The effects of the Biden pardon are not surprising. The people who get dinged for marijuana possession at the federal level are basically only people unlucky enough to blunder into an arrest on federal property (national parks, VA hospital, etc.) and unlucky enough to have a misdemeanor US attorney who somehow gives a shit. Worst case scenario they'll spend a few weeks in US Marshal custody and get released. Not enough to register as a blip.
I recognize that arrests != charges, but I don't want to downplay how seriously disrupting an arrest can be. You're just going along your merry way when a cop plucks you out of the fray. I've had many clients who lost jobs and apartments just because of arrests, that's always the first thing they want to talk to me about.
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