When Governor Maura Healey unveiled a blanket pardon of marijuana possession convictions last March, her office said it would begin automatically updating people’s records to reflect the “most sweeping” move of its kind in the country. Better yet, state officials said, people would “probably not” have to do anything to claim a pardon, which could cover hundreds of thousands of people.
A year later, only a fraction ofthat number has proof they’ve been pardoned, asHealey’s promise of automaticrelief, albeit well-intentioned, has collided with bureaucratic reality.
As of mid-March, state officials say they’ve corrected the records of fewer than 1,900 people to reflect that their conviction has been pardoned. It’s the product of what state officials described as a labor-intensive process. But, attorneys say it also means the relief the blanket pardon was meant to deliver has been slow to materialize for many.
Aides to Healey said they’re working through a list of tens of thousands of people whom court officials have identified and whom Healey’s office said are those who “would be most impacted by the marijuana pardon,” such as people with more recent convictions.
Healey’s office emphasized that even if an individual’s record has not been corrected, every person who had a misdemeanor marijuana possession conviction as of last March is considered pardoned.
However, it was not clear exactly how long the process of updating thousands of court records will ultimately take. And whether the state corrects the records of any people beyond that initial list also remains to be seen.Healey’s office said it would “continue to work to identify others” who should have their records updated.
“Sadly, it takes the winds out of the sails of the wonderfulness of the governor’s pardon,” Pauline Quirion, director of Greater Boston Legal Services’ CORI & Re-entry Project,said of the time it’s taking to correct people’s records. “It was intended to benefit lots of people who had these cases, and give them some relief. If nothing is happening with them, then the relief is delayed.”
The good news, Quirion said, is that Healey’s office has made it relatively easy for those impacted to request a so-called pardon certificate, a document proving they’ve received a pardon even if their records aren’t updated. But just 75 people have actually requested one, and even fewer have been issued one, according to state officials.
Karissa Hand, a Healey spokesperson, called theeffort to update people’s records an “additional administrative step” that the governor’s office and the Trial Court are taking.
“Because of Governor Healey’s action, hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts residents have had marijuana possession convictions pardoned and have received the full relief that comes along with erasing their convictions,” Hand said.
Healey’s pardon covered all adult state-level misdemeanor possession convictions handed down before March 13 of last year, the day she announced it.
The one-time, large-scale pardon was intended to forgive convictions on charges that are no longer considered a crime in Massachusetts and that officials say can block residents from finding ajob or getting housing.
At the time, Healey’s administration said it would “start automatically updating many records for those who are eligible for a pardon,” though it warned that “limitations” in the court’s electronic records meant not everyone would have their record automatically updated.
A year later, the process of actually doing soshows that the “wheels of justice may be turning slowly, but at least they are turning — and Governor Healey should be applauded for that,” said Daniel Medwed, a Northeastern University law professor who sat on a Massachusetts Bar Association’s clemency task force.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean the process of implementing the pardon will be as rapid as we’d like,” he said.
Healey’s office said it began correcting people’s records in October, roughly six months after the Governor’s Council unanimously approved the blanket pardon she proposed.
The state’s Trial Court provided Healey’s office last year with a list of 22,816 people, according to Healey’s office. Court officials said last April, the list included cases containing one or more misdemeanor possession of marijuana convictions that “may be eligible” for the pardon.
Starting with cases in Boston Municipal Court — the court with the most convictions, state officials said — Healey’s legal office checks whether individuals identified in the Trial Court’s list are covered by the pardon, according to aides. If they are, the governor’s office then sends a letter back to the Trial Court confirming as much, and court officials correct the record.
As of mid-March, 1,876 individual records had been updated, Healey officials said.
State officials have said that those who have been pardoned can also ask for a pardon certificate, including if they need proof that they’ve received one before their record is updated or if they believe it hasn’t been updated at all. Her office said it received 75 requests for a pardon certificate. Forty of those were ultimately approved, Healey aides said. The others were deemed to be ineligible, and three were still pending.
State officials have long said they believe far more people fall under the blanket pardon than the nearly 23,000 identified in the initial list provided by court officials.
For example, Massachusetts law enforcement issuednearly 68,800 civil or criminal violations for marijuana possession between 2000 and 2013, according to a Cannabis Control Commission research report. And from 1995 to 2008 — the year Massachusetts voters approved a ballot measure decriminalizingthe possession of one ounce or less of marijuana — there were approximately 8,000 or more arrests each year for selling or possessing marijuana, according to a 2016 analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.
Massachusetts voters approved a ballot question in 2016 legalizing marijuana for recreational use.
Healey’s office has not offered an exact figure or rangeof how many people could be covered by her pardon; rather, they’ve broadly estimated that “hundreds of thousands” could benefit.
Other states have offered more precise estimates. A few months after Healey’s blanket pardon, Maryland Governor Wes Moore issued his own wide-scale marijuana pardon, saying it would cover more than 175,000 convictions. In 2022, then-Oregon Governor Kate Brown announced that she was pardoning roughly 45,000 people convicted of simple possession of marijuana.
In Missouri, court officials have expunged — in other words, erased — more than 140,000 marijuana cases since voters passed a 2022 constitutional amendment to legalize recreational cannabis.
The Missourilaw also mandated that officials automatically remove eligible convictions from people’s records, kicking off a process that in some counties included sorting through paper records dating back decades, said Paul Armentano, deputy director NORML, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group that pushes to reform state and federal marijuana laws.
“This wasn’t something they wanted to do. This was something they were mandated to do,” Armentano said. Still, he said, court officials have updated tens of thousands of records in roughly two years.
“They moved a lot more efficiently than, say, Massachusetts has,” he said.
Massachusetts residents have faced a bureaucratic slog in the state’s own efforts to allow people to erase similar convictions. State Senator Adam Gomez, a Springfield Democrat, said prior to Healey’s pardon announcement, he sought to expunge his own marijuana possession charges from when he was a teenager, navigating a separate process that took nearly a year to complete.
That so many records are left to correct to reflect the pardons, he said, shows “the difficulty is enormous when it comes to decriminalizing cannabis.”
“These are things we’re learning,” Gomez said, “that it wasn’t as simple as we thought.”
Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him @mattpstout.
Aides to Governor Maura Healey said they’re working through a list of tens of thousands of people whom court officials have identified as being eligible under the state’s blanket marijuana pardon. Read More
