AUGUSTA, Maine — A panel including several Maine lawmakers recommended Monday that the state sealing records of low-level marijuana convictions that occurred before voters approved recreational use in a 2016 referendum.
The Maine Criminal Records Review Committee, a panel whose 29 members include lawmakers and representatives of various legal, nonprofit, law enforcement and media groups, can only recommend rather than pass legislation. Proposals to seal or expunge marijuana convictions have failed to pass the Democratic-led Legislature in recent years.
But it was still a major step forward for a reform aimed at reducing stigmas and barriers facing those with low-level marijuana convictions has nonetheless garnered support. Maine has been at both the forefront of prohibiting and legalizing marijuana since the 1800s.
The recommendation from Sen. Eric Brakey, R-Auburn, was endorsed Monday in a 13-5 vote of the panel, which had four abstentions and several absences. House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, who also sits on the panel, missed the vote but has backed similar ideas before.
Brakey’s proposal holds that Maine should set up a process to automatically seal records of all misdemeanor possession and cultivation convictions that occurred between an electronic records system launching in 2001 and when voters approved adult use in 2016.
Brakey also wanted to establish a process to expunge personally identifiable information from past misdemeanor possession and cultivation convictions, but the committee did not back that. It approved a recommendation to increase public outreach on the current record-sealing process.
“The war on drugs, as far as it’s related to cannabis, has been a historical injustice to a lot of people,” Brakey said.
The committee discussed how at least 2,500 people in Maine have been identified as having a misdemeanor marijuana possession or cultivation conviction that would get sealed if the recommendation ultimately became law.
Opponents included judiciary representatives and newsroom leaders, including Maine Freedom of Information Coalition vice president Judy Meyer and Dan MacLeod, the managing editor of the Bangor Daily News.
Meyer, the executive editor of the Sun Journal, Kennebec Journal, Morning Sentinel and several weekly papers, noted the coalition successfully challenged in 2016 the Maine judiciary’s shift to automatically seal dismissed criminal charges, adding past court cases in the U.S. have found that to violate the First Amendment. The coalition supports a petition process instead.
Amanda Doherty, the judiciary’s representative, also voted against the recommendation due in part to technological concerns, saying pulling records and docket numbers to find every eligible person “is a literal inability at this point.”
Two dozen states and Washington, D.C., have legalized recreational marijuana, and roughly the same number have laws surrounding sealing or expunging records related to decriminalized or now-legal marijuana convictions, while 38 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized medical marijuana.
The Legislature reconvenes in January but is limited in terms of the bills it will consider during the shortened, even-year session.
