3,000 NYC marijuana cases get tossed

NEW YORK — Over 3,000 low-level marijuana cases were thrown out Wednesday as Manhattan’s top prosecutor furthered a shift away from arresting and prosecuting many people for smalltime pot offenses in the nation’s biggest city.

Misdemeanor and violation-level pot possession cases that had sat open for as long as 40 years were dismissed in a matter of minutes after Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. asked a court to scrap 3,042 warrants for people who missed court dates and to toss out the cases themselves. He recently decided to stop prosecuting many minor pot possession cases and argued it made sense to spare people potential arrests in old ones.

“If anyone was brought in today on one of these warrants, my office would dismiss the case,” the Democrat said. He called the mass dismissal “something that is off-script but actually serves the interests of justice enormously.”

None of the people charged in the cases was there to hear Criminal Court Judge Kevin McGrath wipe them out. Some may long since have forgotten about the cases.

But now they no longer face potential problems getting jobs or housing if the warrants pop up during background checks, or possible arrest if their IDs are checked during otherwise routine interactions with police — after a fender-bender, for instance, or while reporting a crime.

“They are living with the peril of being put through the system for almost no reason,” said Carolyn Wilson, director of New York County Defender Services. Her group and Neighborhood Defender Services of Harlem are ready to help people seeking to figure out whether the dismissals affect them.

Vance and Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez decided this summer not to prosecute most new misdemeanor pot possession and smoking cases, saying they had little public safety impact but caused defendants problems with employment, housing, immigration and more.