Discover how Missouri State Courts are working to clear criminal records for marijuana offenses and promote criminal justice reform.
More than six months after the constitutional deadline had passed for Missouri circuit courts to expunge the criminal records of those convicted of most marijuana offenses, an untold number of cases remain to be reviewed.
Mandatory expungement of all convictions for non-violent crimes related to marijuana use and possession – excluding supplying marijuana to a minor or driving under the influence – was a key provision of the constitutional amendment Missouri voters ratified in November 2022 legalizing adult-use recreational marijuana use.
Under expungement provisions of Amendment 3, Missouri’s 46 judicial circuits were constitutionally required to have all eligible misdemeanor marijuana cases expunged by June 8, 2023. The deadline for expunging felony charges followed six months later on Dec. 8, 2023.
Although touted by Amendment 3 supporters as “automatic” expungement since the courts were required to take action on their own without individual defendants having to petition them for relief, in reality the process has been anything but automatic, with court clerks having to manually review hundreds of thousands of cases.
According to statistics the Missouri Supreme Court supplied to the Independent, 122,689 cases had been expunged as of May 17. Although the court listed 272,887 cases as having been reviewed, officials acknowledged that figure was likely significantly undercounted as many local courts weren’t aware they were also supposed to tally and report the number of cases reviewed but deemed ineligible in addition to the number of cases actually expunged.
The Independent reported expungement reviews have largely been completed for cases filed in recent decades under the state’s electronic case management system. For most cases filed prior to the 2000s, however, circuit clerks have to pore through paper case files going back as far as 1971, when Missouri enacted its first marijuana prohibition laws. Court officials had no estimate of how many cases remained to be reviewed.
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