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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Notes -
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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