Some 3,518 Missourians have had their marijuana cases expunged from public records within the first few weeks that Amendment 3 became effective on Jan. 1, according to the Missouri Office of State Courts Administrator.
Amendment 3, approved by Missouri voters in Nov. 2022, legalized the possession, cultivation, and licensed retail sale of 3 ounces of recreational cannabis for adults over 21 years old.
"This is very positively impacting thousands of lives,” said Dan Viets, an attorney, and coordinator with the Missouri National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). “Ultimately, we expect more than 100,000 expungements will be automatically granted in Missouri marijuana cases.”
The new law, now referred to as Article 14, requires misdemeanor expungements to be completed by June 8 and certain marijuana felonies to be expunged by Dec. 8.
As a result, Gov. Mike Parson announced last week that he planned to allocate $4.54 million for the Office of State Courts Administrator and the state’s circuit courts to meet expungement deadlines along with $2.47 million.
“That money will be reimbursed by the taxes on non-medical marijuana sales,” Viets told the St. Louis Record. “That's what Amendment 3 provides for is that the first use of the sales tax revenue from non-medical marijuana sales is to pay for the expungement. I'm sure they're going to do computer-assisted searches for cases that are appropriate for expungement."
Expungements are more effective than pardons because they clear records while pardons only add a line to the public record stating ‘Pardon granted,’ according to a press release.
“Pardons do not remove anything from the public record and expungements don’t release anyone from prison,” Viets said. “Those two concepts have been conflated."
The proposed allocations originated from the Office of State Courts Administrator, according to media reports.
“The money may be for new workers or it may be for existing employees, but it's to pay for overtime and for temporary workers who will come in and go through the cases and determine which ones are appropriate for expungement,” Viets said. “Some counties are already doing that. I'm getting notices in my client's cases from a few different counties who are already undertaking that expungement process and not even waiting for the funding to come through.”
The state legislature has until May 5 to draft and approve its own version of the budget.
"The Department of Health and Senior Services has done a great job of implementing medical marijuana provisions of Article 14 and the adult use provisions," Viets added. "In several other states, the state government has procrastinated, resisted, and thrown up roadblocks. That has not been true in Missouri."