There’s “no evidence of these claims was presented to the circuit court,” judges said.
By Rebecca Rivas, Missouri Independent
Missouri courts were supposed to automatically erase eligible marijuana misdemeanors from criminal records by June 8, 2023, six months after voters legalized recreational marijuana.
But in a recent St. Louis case, the Missouri State Highway Patrol told an appellate court that “hundreds of thousands” of marijuana offenses may still exist on criminal records that should have been cleared.
The patrol offered no evidence to back up that estimate, the Missouri Court of Appeals Eastern District noted in an April opinion. But the case exposed a practical problem with Missouri’s marijuana expungement process: If a court missed an eligible case, it remains unclear what the person is supposed to do about it.
So far, the answers are inconsistent. People whose cases were missed have been told to ask a circuit clerk to fix the issue administratively, file a regular expungement petition or pursue a writ of mandamus. None has emerged as a clearly established statewide remedy.
The appeal involved a St. Louis man identified in court records as D.S., who sought to expunge a 2003 misdemeanor marijuana conviction through a court petition
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