Grits Before Breakfast 7/11/2020
Great Texas Hemp Hiatus combines with COVID to reveal a dirty little secret about pot prosecutions: Nobody cares if you don't make them
Politics is unpredictable and a big part of success stems from one's ability to capitalize on unexpected advantages when they arise. This requires recognizing them in real time as they occur.
Grits submits that, when it comes to marijuana policy, the passage of Texas' law legalizing "hemp" in 2019 was a game changing alteration to the Texas criminal-justice landscape; like inserting a knuckleballer 8th-inning relief pitcher who then strikes out the side. It's still a tight, close game, but suddenly, there's hope.
Readers will recall that Texas 2019 hemp law included a weird, happy accident: Legislators were told in committee that the testing to distinguish hemp wasn't available at most crime labs, but they either (more likely) didn't understand or simply didn't care (which is sort of the same thing in that job: they didn't care enough to inquire). Regardless, when the law took effect, it required prosecutors prove the THC content in marijuana seized was above a certain level. No public labs and few private ones were set up to do it.
Elected prosecutors responded in more or less bipartisan agreement (with a few outliers on both sides): By dismissing charges for low-level pot possession cases, by the thousands. Early on, the
Texas Tribune estimated arrest volume for pot possession statewide had dropped by nearly 2/3. In the wake of COVID, it's surely dipped much lower than that.
COVID gave judges across the state an incentive to scrub their dockets with an eye toward releasing everyone who could be released, and pot smokers definitely fall into the low-public-safety-risk category. So judges didn't want to see these cases, prosecutors had means to dismiss them, and if police wanted to keep arresting on these charges, the cases would go nowhere.
That's the dynamic underlying Austin PD's
weird recent announcement that it finally would follow guidance given to it by the City Council last year and stop making arrests for marijuana cases that couldn't be prosecuted. Two things: First, the department should have altered their policy as soon as they were told and maybe the council wouldn't be as ready to oust the chief. Second, the County Attorney had said he wouldn't prosecute without testing; the City Council had declared no city money could be spent on testing; so Manley really had no choice. Honestly, it's bizarre and concerning that APD continued to make arrests as long as they did.
More:
https://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2020/07/great-texas-hemp-hiatus-combines-with.html
