Judges deny Mosby’s petitions to vacate marijuana convictions

Baltimore judges have denied State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby‘s attempt to vacate roughly 5,000 marijuana convictions, with at least one judge finding procedural and substantive issues with her office’s filing.

Mosby’s office filed two petitions in January, one in Circuit Court and the other in District Court, that named the state of Maryland as the defendant and sought to vacate convictions en masse. The same day the petitions were filed, Mosby announced her office would cease prosecutions for possession.

Judges denied the petitions in both courts last week, according to electronic filings. In a statement Monday, Mosby said her office was considering options after the court rulings.

“I am deeply disappointed that this ruling did not afford us any opportunity to present legal arguments and essentially eliminated the court from being a safe harbor for those that were harmed by the discriminatory enforcement of marijuana laws in this city,” she said.

In the Circuit Court matter, Administrative Judge W. Michel Pierson ruled Friday that no hearing was necessary on the petition because it failed to make a case for the relief requested. It was unclear if the District Court judge issued a written opinion.

The filings were petitions for writ of error coram nobis, asking the courts to reopen cases due to an error in fact. The alleged error, according to the petitions, was the disparate impact on communities of color and “draconian collateral consequences” that raise a constitutional equal protection issue.

Pierson determined the petition failed to comply with many provision of applicable rules and “suffers from fatal substantive deficiencies.”

To request coram nobis relief, the petitioner must include specific details about the person, criminal proceedings, relevant facts that would have resulted in a different judgment and other information, according to Pierson. The state was not the proper petitioner in the case because it was not the individual subject to the conviction, Pierson said, adding that the petition lacked the required details.

The state’s petitions in both courts included lists of case numbers and the defendants’ names. Both also laid out research into the significant impact marijuana arrests have on communities of color and the general collateral consequences that can result from a criminal conviction.

But Pierson said that the consequences “must be actual and concrete, not merely theoretical, speculative or potential” and that claims of discriminatory enforcement must prove a discriminatory intent, not just present statistics showing a disparate impact.

A coram nobis petition also requires a showing that no other remedy is available; Pierson determined expungement is an option for defendants under a 2017 law.

“The consequences alleged in the petition are presumably a result of the social and professional stigma associated with a criminal charge, the exact purpose for which the expungement statute provides relief to these individuals,” he wrote. “Given the existence of such an avenue of relief, which addresses the concerns identified in the petition, the extraordinary remedy of coram nobis is not warranted.”

In a research paper outlining the office’s new marijuana policies, prosecutors said expungement motions were not filed because of the procedural hurdles and the expense of determining if expungement was possible for each case.

2019 legislation

Mosby advocated for legislation in the General Assembly this year that would permit prosecutors to move to vacate certain convictions.

The original bill expressly named marijuana and paraphernalia possession convictions, but it was amended to address past convictions in which newly discovered evidence made a prosecutor doubt the integrity of a conviction. House Bill 874 passed both chambers and is awaiting the governor’s signature.

The cases are State of Maryland v. State of Maryland, 24C19000500 and  0101SP010052019.