Hacker News Reader

Comment by gpmcadam | Hacker News Reader

What about the people who were convicted 15 years and 1 month ago? Or 16 years? Or 20 years?

Feels pretty arbitrary.

> Judges in Seattle have decided to quash convictions for marijuana possession for anyone prosecuted in the city between 1996 and 2010. Possession of marijuana became legal in the state of Washington in 2012.

Another question is why didn't they quash convictions between 1996 and present, or between 1996 and 2012 when it became legal? Such obvious questions that aren't addressed by the article -- and this is the BBC no less.

Why leave out 2011-(mid)2012?

Supposedly because they had a policy that caused them to throw out all cases in the meantime, like it is done now in some jurisdictions.

I’d have to go digging around to do better than my middle-aged memory allows, but at some point shortly before legalization, Seattle PD said pot was they’re lowest priority (translation: don’t force our hand by smoking in front of a grade school, and we’ll leave you alone). Could be that there are no convictions to overturn 2010-2012.

The article doesn't address this, but the 15 years in question are actually 1996-2010. The city attorney's motion doesn't explain why, though it implies that the motion covers all cases prosecuted by that office.

The article leaves it out, but I found ought that in 2003, Washington state passed legislature stating marijuana convictions were the lowest priority crimes. I believe thats why the cut off is 15 years, to mark when the societal law and understanding changed.

You gotta start small and iterate. Going for world peace with the first step isn't going to work.

This is terrible news for those that didn't get included. The public will miss the details and think that everyone was included. Anyone with a conviction outside this arbitrary time period will be assumed to have some extenuating circumstances that meant that their conviction was upheld.

Is that really worse for people who were omitted by this legislature that this legislature passed? Because I can't see any change.

Yes it is. Before when a potential employer saw a cannabis conviction on a criminal records check they would have potentially ignored it because it is no longer a crime. Now they will think that all the previous convictions that should have been struck off have been struck off and any that show will be treated as having had enough merit to have been deliberately missed out.

Well, then he's dumb, because he should at least acknowledge that the conviction date is from before 1996, so who knows what happened?

Law is not a lean startup.

In many countries there are constitutional principles to prevent arbitrary pardon. If a law was unjust all prisoners are freed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com