See query.
Historical parallels galore in US jurisprudence? Prohibition? Less famous cases where law changes?
They stay in unless the Governor or President (depending on the charges) issues a pardon or commutes their sentences.
There are several prior threads on this topic with comments from the lawyers. Search may prove enlightening.
A thread along the same lines regarding prohibition, seems as though breaking a law in effect at the time means you were guilty at the time.
An example (paraphrased from the thread), if you get a ticket for doing 70 in a 55, then the speed limit is raised to 70, you don’t get your fine back - you broke the law in effect at the time.
If a law is overturned by a court decision, then anyone convicted is either freed or has grounds to appeal their conviction that will probably be upheld. In that case, what happens is that the court is saying ‘this law was never valid in the first place’. But unless you have the supreme court rule that drug laws are unconstitutional (which is more than a little unlikely), then you’re talking about the legislature repealing a law - in which case, you’re in prison for breaking a valid law, so there’s nothing special that happens. A number of governors have done mass pardons to go along with legalization, but it’s not automatic, and not something that’s required.
This happens all the time, it’s not remotely controversial for someone to serve time for something that later became legal by a law passing.
Of course, the same political environment that would make such a law likely to pass would also make a governor likely to issue pardons. But it’s not a guarantee, especially if the legislature and executive are held by different parties.
Can the legislature “pardon” everyone? Can they, as part of the legislation authorizing the activity, forgive everyone formerly convicted under related statutes?
I suppose one might argue that, just like punishing someone for an act retroactively made illegal, that that could be considered an ex post facto law.
Until on of the legal beagles weighs in. They could theoretically pardon everyone serving federal time, (I think) but they have no jurisdiction on state charges.
That depends on who you mean by “they”. Presumably, state legislatures would have no bearing on those serving federal time.
The legislature might not be able formally to pardon people, if the courts construe the constitution as vesting the power of pardon in the executive rather than the legislature. But they can certainly pass legislation providing for the immediate and unconditional release of a class of prisoners, for their convictions to be expunged, etc.
It’ll probably vary from state to state, but I think that the power to pardon is often reserved to the governor rather than to the legislature. And the governor’s power to pardon doesn’t always extend to a “blanket” order — witness the recent kerfuffle over the Virginia Governor’s blanket restoration of voting rights to ex-offenders.
Perhaps one way to do it without overstepping on the Executive prerogative of pardon could be for the legislature to create a new type of parole that has no monitoring or conditions (e.g. no parole officer to report to, no drug tests, no travel restrictions, allowed to leave the state, etc.), and then provide in the law for this parole to be guaranteed to any prisoner currently incarcerated for a law that has since been repealed. People could thus go “free” in all but name until either the expiration of their original sentences or the actual receipt of a pardon.