Court rules marijuana law doesn’t affect state prisons
Although California voters legalized the possession of marijuana by adults in 2016, the state Supreme Court said Thursday it is still a crime to possess pot in prison, and violators could face additional years behind bars.
Proposition 64, approved by 57% of the voters, allowed adults 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of marijuana for personal use, expanding a 1996 state law that legalized medical use of cannabis. Thursday’s ruling addressed one provision of the initiative that said it did not change any existing laws “pertaining to smoking or ingesting cannabis or cannabis products” in any state prison, leaving those laws in effect.
That provision was not discussed in the ballot arguments or other election materials. Some state appellate courts, citing the overall intent of Prop. 64 to end the criminalization of marijuana, concluded that the ballot measure had legalized pot possession in prison, because possession is not the same as “smoking or ingesting.”
But the state’s high court said Thursday that the longstanding ban on marijuana possession by inmates must be interpreted as a law “pertaining to” consuming cannabis, and can still be enforced unless the Legislature changes it.
“Pertaining to” means “related,” Justice Joshua Groban said for a fivemember majority. “The act of possessing cannabis and the act of using cannabis have an obvious relation insofar as a person has to possess cannabis to smoke or ingest it.”
He noted that the consequences can be severe. The 1990 law upheld by the court makes possession of marijuana behind bars a felony punishable by two, three or four years in prison, but those terms can be doubled for inmates with previous convictions for serious felonies. Two of the inmates in the court case had their previous sentences increased by six years.
“We are sympathetic to the view that (the law) creates extreme disparity between how our legal system treats the possession of cannabis generally versus the possession of such a substance inside a correctional facility. That is also true of many other substances, including alcohol,” Groban said. But he said any revisions are up to the Legislature or the voters.
One of the organizations that sponsored Prop. 64 said lawmakers should quickly amend the statute to overturn the ruling.
“A felony for possession of cannabis in prison is excessive and will result in longer sentences that do not serve the interests of public safety or justice,” said Matthew Schweich, deputy director of the Marijuana Policy Project.
Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and Justices Carol Corrigan, Goodwin Liu and Martin Jenkins joined Groban’s opinion. Justice Leondra Kruger, joined by Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, said in a partial dissent that the law should be interpreted somewhat more leniently, in the spirit of Prop. 64, to allow marijuana possession to be prosecuted under a 1949 law with a maximum sentence of three years.
That law, Kruger said, classifies marijuana like most other drugs and alcohol that are illegal in prison, but not as serious as methamphetamine or heroin.