Gonzalez asks Brooklyn court to dismiss more than 3,500 marijuana cases
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez on Tuesday asked the court to dismiss 3,578 marijuana cases that remained on the docket, mainly because of open warrants.
With this move, nearly all marijuana cases in Brooklyn have been dismissed. Since the State Legislature legalized marijuana in March, the DA’s Office dismissed about 240 active cases in which marijuana was charged, while marijuana charges that are included in felony cases are being dismissed in the course of court proceedings.
District Attorney Gonzalez said, “For too long, criminalization of marijuana has disproportionately impacted young people and communities of color whose members made up about 90 percent of those arrested. These arrests ruined the lives of thousands of people over the years, saddling many with criminal convictions that prevented them from pursuing opportunities in life. That was why, in Brooklyn, we stopped prosecuting possession cases in 2014 and went further in 2017, declining prosecution of nearly all smoking cases as well. A year later, we also moved to dismiss warrant cases.
“I am gratified that the New York Legislature legalized marijuana earlier this year in a bill that included an automatic expungement provision. Since its passage, my office has moved to dismiss open cases and stated we will no longer bring pending marijuana charges before grand or petit juries. Today, I asked the court to dismiss over 3,500 warrant cases that remained in the system, effectively clearing the Brooklyn docket from these vestiges of previous models of policing and prosecution,” he added.
Gonzalez appeared before Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Keisha Espinal and requested that 3,578 pending marijuana cases be dismissed and that the court vacate any relevant arrest warrants, judgments of conviction and guilty pleas related to those cases.
Gonzalez’s predecessor, the late Ken Thompson, stopped prosecuting marijuana possession cases in Brooklyn in 2014. In 2017, District Attorney Gonzalez, as the acting DA, went further and declined to prosecute nearly all marijuana smoking cases as well. As a result, marijuana arrests in Brooklyn, which numbered in the thousands every year earlier in that decade, had slowed to a trickle by 2018.