BURLINGTON — With marijuana legalization expected to be hotly debated in the upcoming legislative session, reform advocates want to make sure there is redress for people affected by past pot convictions.
Albert Petrarca, with the group BTV Green, wants that to take the form of a sweeping amnesty provision that acknowledges what he describes as decades of misguided drug policy.
“Amnesty puts (marijuana) prohibition on trial,” Petrarca told VTDigger in an interview Monday.
The Burlington resident wants the state’s largest city to pass an amnesty referendum to send a message to Montpelier that there is broad popular support for such a provision — which he believes there is. While not legally binding, referendums are seen as a good gauge of public sentiment, which can drive policy discussions.
As more states legalize marijuana, Petrarca says a new class of mostly wealthy white male “cannabis capitalists” are poised to make a fortune off the sale of a product that still, in some cases, blocks people convicted of pot crimes from the democratic process and the mainstream economy. Those affected by pot busts are disproportionately people of color, he said.
A retired ICU nurse whose face is largely obscured by a massive beard, Petrarca said he immediately became involved with marijuana policy reform when he moved to Burlington several years ago.
He worked with the City Council on previous referendums, including the pot legalization referendum that passed with 70 percent of the vote in 2012. He also worked with former city councilor Rachel Siegel on a failed amnesty referendum last year.
However, Petrarca’s uncompromising approach toward his campaign for pot amnesty has recently put him at odds with his natural allies in Burlington’s Progressive Party.
Petrarca met with newly elected City Councilor Sara Giannoni, P-Ward 3, several times this summer to convince her to reintroduce the amnesty referendum. He left a late August meeting feeling “blindsided” by what he described as a retreat by Giannoni, and the Progressives generally, from the goal of pot amnesty.
Emma Mulvaney-Stanak, chair of the Progressive Party and a former city councilor, who was at that meeting to “help clarify concerns,” said that “it was not a constructive meeting.”
Mulvaney-Stanak said she and Giannoni were concerned that the council would have little appetite for a special election in November to gauge the public’s support for any issue, much less one that has divided the council in the past.
In an off-cycle election year, ballot referendums can be brought to Burlington voters via the council or by residents collecting enough signatures. But with no other referendums, Mulvaney-Stanak said it would be hard to justify the cost of an election to essentially poll voters on pot amnesty.
Giannoni was reluctant to discuss the episode (“Albert is a constituent who is clearly very passionate about this issue,” she wrote in an email, adding that she would not comment further on their interactions). However, she said she supports redress for people with pot convictions, especially if the state legalizes marijuana.
“There has been increased conversation regarding the large numbers of people who are in prison or have criminal records that follow them through their lives,” she said. “This impacts people’s ability to secure employment and disproportionately impacts men of color.”
Mulvaney-Stanak said the Progressives will seek to put the amnesty issue on the ballot in March, when Burlington voters will likely turn out in greater numbers to vote in presidential primaries. If the amnesty initiative failed before the council this fall, it could not be brought back again in March, she said.
“We’re not turning our backs on this issue,” she said. March will be deep into the legislative session, and a strong statement from Burlington voters would be heard in Montpelier, Mulvaney-Stanak said.
Some lawmakers have already got the message, though they may not go as far as Petrarca would like.
Legalization likely to offer some redress
Sen. David Zuckerman, P/D-Chittenden, introduced marijuana legalization and regulation legislation last year that would give some people with pot convictions redress.
His bill, S.95, would expunge the criminal records of people convicted of possessing marijuana paraphernalia or an ounce or less of pot, provided they were 21 or older at the time of the offense.
That doesn’t go nearly far enough for Petrarca, and many others, who want amnesty for any nonviolent marijuana-related conviction. He said there’s no reason that people convicted of possessing or selling even large amounts of marijuana should continue to be marginalized, when legalization is a tacit acknowledgement that they’ve done nothing wrong.
Petrarca brought up a recent bust where a Williston man was arrested after police discovered 63 marijuana plants in various stages of cultivation and more than six ounces of pot at his home.
The man they arrested, Andrew Terry, 45, faces two felony charges, which carry a maximum of 18 years in prison and up to a half-million dollars in fines, according to court records. In the not too distant future, Petrarca argues that Terry’s crimes could be part of a legitimate and growth industry in Vermont.
Police discovered the “highly sophisticated” grow operation following a welfare check at Terry’s North Williston Road home. His mother told police Terry was distraught because he was recently diagnosed with a “serious medical ailment,” court documents show.
Newly appointed Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo said he has reservations about Vermont legalizing marijuana, but if that were to happen it would implicitly raise the question of how to deal with people convicted of marijuana crimes.
In his experience, del Pozo said dealing large quantities of marijuana has been “deeply intertwined” with violent crime, and he sees a distinction between minor possession crimes that leave people with criminal records and large-scale sale and distribution. Del Pozo was not commenting on Terry’s case.
Asked for his position on pot amnesty, Mayor Miro Weinberger’s office responded with a statement saying the incarceration of “massive numbers of Americans for low-level marijuana offenses” is a problematic aspect of U.S. drug policy.
Though he did not address amnesty directly, Weinberger said he supports the state’s move to decriminalize those low-level pot offenses, and noted that city police don’t “proactively enforce violations of low-level marijuana possession or consumption.”
Should Vermont legalize pot, there is already an avenue to redress for people with nonviolent pot convictions. Over the summer Gov. Peter Shumlin signed into law Act 36, which allows for the expungement of convictions for behavior that is no longer criminal.
In such cases, the new expungement law allows people for whom one year has elapsed since the completion of their sentence and post conviction supervision to have their criminal records sealed or expunged provided the court finds it serves the “interest of justice.”
Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, was the bill’s lead sponsor. “If we go to legalization it’s a no-brainer,” he said of amnesty for nonviolent pot crimes.
Benning, a criminal defense lawyer, says that when he started practicing law, adultery was a crime, and later when that crime was eliminated in the 1980s, he said it no longer made sense for such a conviction to dog people’s lives.
“Society constantly changes and what’s considered illegal today many not be tomorrow,” he said. “There’s no point in having that be a barrier in your life.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the requirements for expungement under Act 36.
