A quarter of million Michiganders have a marijuana-related conviction on their criminal record. It's a stain that continues to upend lives years after Michigan legalized marijuana.
For decades, police have been arresting thousands of people in Michigan each year on marijuana charges, and in some cases, sending those people to prison — until Michigan legalized recreational marijuana in 2018.
Some of those convicted are still serving time. Others are still suffering the consequences for a crime that's no longer illegal in Michigan.
That could start to change a matter of months.
Hundreds of thousands more Michiganders will become eligible to have their criminal records wiped clean under legislation signed into law in October 2020 by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. When the Clean Slate law goes into effect until April 2021, it will expand criteria for expungements related to low-level traffic offenses and marijuana convictions. Starting in October 2022, those remaining offenders will have their criminal record automatically expunged.
A life upended
Ryan Basore never will forget Dec. 1, 2010, the day he said changed his life forever. Basore was one of Michigan's first medical marijuana caregivers. That was the day police and federal agents raided his grow operation raided near Lansing.
"We got raided by the DEA, state police, National Guard troops with black hawk helicopters and smoke bombs. It was right on Gov. [Jennifer] Granholm's way out. She approved action on our legal medical marijuana grow," Basore said.
In 2008, Michigan voters approved medical marijuana, although leaders at the state and local levels scrambled to create a regulated market. Within a span of three years, Basore would be targeted by federal investigators, charged with marijuana-related crimes and be imprisoned.
In 2012, Basore and six others were indicted on charges in connection with the grow facility. In 2014, Basore pleaded guilty to two charges and was sentenced to 48 months in federal prison, the longest sentence of those indicted. He was released after serving three years.
"We got a whole new generation used to not getting bothered ... about marijuana in Michigan; and you have these people who got their lives ruined," Basore said.
He's far from the only one.
"It is extremely common for people to lose employment and have housing problems solely because of an old criminal conviction," said John Cooper, executive director of Safe & Just Michigan, a statewide criminal justice research policy advocacy organization.
Cooper said Michigan's new clean slate law will erase convictions for an estimated 250,000 Michigan residents with misdemeanor convictions for marijuana use or possession.
Cooper called the automatic-expungement bill the most expansive legislation passed in any state.
"I think we'll see better economic productivity, healthier communities, and broader tax base as a result of the clean slate law," Cooper said.
Charges dropped
Local prosecutors started dismissing pending cases involving use and possession of small amounts of pot when Michigan legalized recreational marijuana in December 2018.
Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting said his office dismissed 275 open cases at that time.
"it allows people who made a mistake to get past and not have that be something they drag with them for the rest of their lives," Getting said.
The most recent Michigan Department of Corrections records show hundreds of people were incarcerated on a combination of offenses that included marijuana as of 2018. According to the 2018 data, 11 incarcerated inmates had marijuana as their most serious offense.
"In terms of pure marijuana possession convictions, there's very few people in the prison for that," Cooper said.
Redemption Cannabis
Basore said one his consulting clients awarded him a $50,000 grant as part of a social equity program to help those impacted by marijuana related prosecutions.
The grant allowed Basore to launch Redemption Cannabis, a marijuana supply company that sends a portion of its proceeds to help offenders, including job skills training programs, prisoner re-entry initiatives and expungement clinics, he said.
"There's a lot of motivated people in Michigan that are upset who had their rights trampled and aren't willing to let it go," Basore said.
Basore said he's applied for a presidential pardon to try to clear his record. Michigan's new clean slate law, doesn't apply to federal convictions.
Push to legalize federally
Marijuana is still illegal at the federal level. Numbers from the FBI show nationwide marijuana arrests dropped 18% in 2019.
According to the FBI report, police across the nation arrested more than 545,000 people for marijuana-related violations in 2019 — more arrests than for violent crime.
The U.S House of Representatives voted Dec. 4 to decriminalizes cannabis and cleared the way to erase nonviolent federal marijuana convictions. The Senate is unlikely to approve the bill.