Nearly 1K people need new sentences after drug ruling. Here’s Pierce County’s plan
Pierce County has started resentencing people whose cases are affected by a state Supreme Court ruling that found Washington’s simple drug possession law unconstitutional.
Michael Kawamura, head of the Pierce County Department of Assigned Counsel, said his office has identified 900 to 1,000 people who are currently incarcerated and could be impacted by the decision. There are several thousand across the state.
“I think we’re one of the first jurisdictions to actually start moving on this,” Kawamura said.
The high court’s ruling in State v. Blake found the law unconstitutional because it doesn’t require prosecutors to prove someone knowingly had drugs.
“... the possession statute at issue here does far more than regulate drugs. It is unique in the nation in criminalizing entirely innocent, unknowing possession,” Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud wrote for the majority.
The Feb. 25 decision left lawmakers to figure out how to address drug possession and substance use disorder going forward.
It also meant the offender scores that determine someone’s standard sentencing range changed for many people in the custody of the state Department of Corrections.
The first docket was Thursday in Pierce County Superior Court. The judge and attorneys were in the courtroom in-person and defendants appeared by video from prisons across the state.
First up was a 33-year-old man convicted of second-degree assault and second-degree malicious mischief.
He was sentenced to three years, seven months in prison last year, which was the low-end of his standard range at the time.
Now the low-end of his standard range is two years, nine months.
That’s what Judge Philip Sorensen gave him, saying that it seemed reasonable to him that someone who got a low-end sentence initially would get the low-end again at this sort of resentencing. Same for high-end sentences, he said.
The man briefly told the court about his struggles with addiction and grief in the wake of two deaths in his family.
He said he’s a father, and that he has a support system and a good job waiting for him when he’s released.
“Thank you for giving me an opportunity and another chance at life,” he said.
Kawamura said there are 20 people on the resentencing docket per week for now, and that he expects that to increase to 26 per week in July.
There are also impacts beyond resentencings, he said, such as vacating convictions and returning court fees.
“This decision I believe has the most impact on Pierce County due to the number of historic UPCS (unlawful possession of controlled substance) convictions in this county,” Kawamura said.
He said the numbers seem to be declining in recent years, but that DOC data shows Pierce County has more of those convictions than many jurisdictions.
Kawamura said they’re prioritizing people who might be subject to immediate release.
Identifying those cases is a massive undertaking. Figuring out if someone’s case is impacted by the Blake decision requires a deep dive into the records of their criminal history, which can include cases from other counties and other states.
“We’re going through them as quickly as we can,” he said.
DAC and the Prosecutor’s Office asked for additional staffing following the Supreme Court’s ruling. Last month the County Council approved funding for 12 temporary positions in the Prosecutor’s Office that will cost $800,000 and eight temporary positions at DAC that will cost $400,000.
“Each court is handling this a little bit differently, but Pierce County is definitely one of the first to get very organized and to try and approach this holistically,” said Christie Hedman, executive director of the Washington Defender Association.
There are many logistical and bureaucratic hurdles to work through across the state, she said.
For instance, what does the ruling mean for someone on community custody? What happens in places that don’t have an organized public defense office? What does it take for an attorney to speak confidentially with a client in DOC custody during the pandemic while using an interpreter?
“I’ve been likening it to whack-a-mole,” she said. “One issue comes up and you deal with it ... It’s going to take time.”
Meanwhile, courts across the country are dealing with a massive backlog of cases following the suspension of jury trials in response to the pandemic.
One of the people on Sorensen’s docket Thursday was a 32-year-old man who recognized the judge from drug court, a therapeutic court that offers a program of treatment and court monitoring as an alternative to incarceration.
“Did it go OK?” Sorensen asked, prompting a light-hearted moment in the courtroom.
No, the man said. That’s why they were there. He didn’t graduate the program.
Even still, he told the judge drug court impacted his life and that he has nothing but good things to say about the program and the skills it gave him. He kicks himself, he said, for relapsing when he was close to graduation. He got into a relationship that he shouldn’t have, he explained to the judge.
In prison he earned his GED and took carpentry classes.
“I’ve got a lot of knowledge to come home with,” he said.
The man had been sentenced to a high-end term of five years in prison in 2019 for two counts of unlawful delivery of a controlled substance.
Sorensen sentenced him to a year and eight months, the new high-end of the man’s standard range.
“It sounds like you’re going to be headed out the door,” the judge said. “Are you ready?”
He said he was.
