3 Things You Can Do in Support of Legalization, But Also Keep on Reading Below!
- Join the 3rd Thursday Chat (3ThC) with special guest Lamar Proctor who has been behind the defense table and the prosecutor table. Join live via YouTube or Facebook at 8PM 8/20
- Register for the FREE Advocacy training coming up on 8/23! https://www.ncnorml.org/effective-advocacy-2/
- Research your District Attorney to begin finding ways to leverage the prosecutorial power. You can find out who your District Attorney is here.
During last month’s Third Thursday NC NORML Board Chat, our guest speaker, defense attorney Jamie Paulen, shared with us some stories from her experiences working with clients on cannabis cases in North Carolina. During our chat, we briefly touched upon the discretionary power of prosecutors and law enforcement in determining whether to charge for simple marijuana possession.
With this month’s theme of criminal injustice, we will dive further into our District Attorneys’ discretionary power and the potential impact we could realize in North Carolina if District Attorneys stopped prosecuting for marijuana possession.
Professor Shea Denning discusses the constitutional duties, statutory responsibilities, and discretionary power of District Attorney’s in a UNC School of Government blog post. Denning even pointedly works through an example of if a DA decided to stop prosecuting cases for simple marijuana possession, stating: “Implementation of such a policy would accord with prosecutors’ routine reconsideration of initial charging decisions made by law enforcement officers and magistrates.”
The idea of a DA policy to stop charging for simple marijuana possession has already been implemented elsewhere in the country, with one recent example being in Virginia. Earlier this year in Fairfax and Arlington counties, Commonwealth Attorneys Steve Descano and Parisa Dehghani-Tafti both implemented this type of policy. The reasoning as explained in a Washington Post article:
“pot possession prosecutions do little to protect public safety, disproportionately fall on people of color, saddle defendants with damaging convictions and drain resources that can better be spent on more serious crimes.”
As Jamie Paulen pointed out in her example from magistrates, and as supported from case law referenced by Denning, DAs are given a great deal of discretion in carrying out their duties. If we are able to follow the example of Virginia’s Fairfax and Arlington Counties and call on our DAs to stop charging for simple marijuana possession, we can effectively have an immediate impact on the criminal injustice surrounding cannabis in North Carolina as we continue to work towards legalization of cannabis.
Don't miss your opportunity to act now for cannabis! We all can do what we can with what we have where we are!
- Join the 3rd Thursday Chat (3ThC) with special guest Lamar Proctor who has been behind the defense table and the prosecutor table. Join live via YouTube or Facebook at 8PM 8/20
- Register for the FREE Advocacy training coming up on 8/23! https://www.ncnorml.org/effective-advocacy-2/
- Research your District Attorney to begin finding ways to leverage the prosecutorial power. You can find out who your District Attorney is here.
As always:
- Sign up at www.ncnorml.org/get-involved/ so we can reach you with specific information on your representatives.
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