OK, suppose that drugs were decriminalized tomorrow. (No value judgements here, just trying to think of a criminal law that might actually be gotten rid of sometime.) Would people currently in jail for drug related offenses – and ONLY drug related offenses – be set free? I’m not suggesting that they would get their fines back or anything, but would they walk?
I know you can’t be jailed for committing an act that wasn’t illegal when you did it, but I don’t know about this case. I suppose Prohibition would be a good test case, but a lot of the big-name criminals were in for more than possession. Did those unlucky everyday souls have to serve out their time while everyone outside was drinking margaritas?
IANAL but it would seem to me that just because a law is overturned would not necessarily mean that the offender would automatically get out of prison. It was against the law when the person committed the crime, and that is why he is in prison. I would hazard a guess that the only way they could get out of prison would be a complete pardon.
Even if the legislation did not pardon existing “drugs only” offenders outright, it would weigh very heavily in parole hearings. Parole boards would probably release such prisoners very quickly, both to relieve prison overcrowding, and avoid criticism concerning jailing people for doing something which was no longer a crime.
In a similar vein, after the catholic prohibition against eating meat on friday was lifted, did the people who went to hell for eating meat on friday get out of hell?
Y’know, smackfu, I found a link on the bottom of the page that you posted that leads here:
which discusses the “well-established principle that after ‘the expiration or repeal of a law, no penalty can be enforced, nor punishment inflicted, for violations of the law committed while it was in force. . . .’” Not that I’d heard of it before, but that seems to indicate that you’d walk pretty soon after decriminalization of any law that held you in jail.
Also, wasn’t eating meat on Friday merely a venal sin? I guess you’d get time off in Purgatory, but it’s not the sort of thing that would doom you to hell in the first place.
Well, I imagine that if there was a political climate where marijuana was actually legalized that it would be seen as a half-way measure to legalize without an accompanying Presidential pardon. The recent Alaska iniative not only offered to legalize marijuana but to pardon all non-violent marijuana criminals and pay them retroactive damages. It failed, but perhaps if they hadn’t tacked on the damages bit it very well could have succeeded and at least some victims of the War on Drugs could have been released
That could just mean that if you were selling liquor before the repeal, and the cops only found out after the repeal, they couldn’t prosecute you for breaking the law while it was in force. The law has to be in effect not only during the act in question, but also when the indictment is handed down.
Lumpy - I’d agree with your interpretation, especially in light of smackfu’s quote which also implied that settled convictions stood. I would still like to know if that meant that a lot of prisoners convicted under the NPA simply got paroled, as I speculated about the OP’s drug legislation sans pardon.
Here’s a link of something that happened recently. The California woman was charged with murder…but a new defense was added to California law that she could had used. So the Gov pardoned her.