KANSAS CITY, Mo. — There are only a few days left before Missouri counties reach their deadline to finish felony marijuana case expungements.
Experts say many counties aren't even close to finishing, but the failure to meet the deadline shouldn't come as a surprise.
Dan Viets, a lawyer and marijuana advocate with Missouri NORML, said proponents for the change always knew it would be a challenging, if not an impossible deadline to meet.
"Almost a century of marijuana prohibition in the state of Missouri, so there are many, many, hundreds of thousands, maybe even over a million marijuana cases that need to be expunged," he said. "But we are very happy that the courts across the state of Missouri have expunged, as we predicted, almost 100,000 marijuana cases."
He says it's the effort to commit more resources to expungement that counts.
"Back in June when the misdemeanor deadline passed, there were some counties, at least a half-a-dozen counties, who had apparently made no effort whatsoever," Viets said. "There were some counties who had not expunged a single case at that point. But that has changed."
He said now every county has made an effort and praised for the efforts of officials in Greene County for their efforts to expunge cases.
Many counties are taking advantage of the extra funding marijuana sales bring to hire additional help or pay clerks overtime to work specifically on eligible expungement cases.
Even with all the work, the Dec. 8 deadline is there.
"There is still a possibility of litigation if those counties do not continue to make a good faith effort to comply with the Missouri constitution," Viets said.
