Judge: I’ll turn over new leaf
A Brooklyn federal judge says he’s not going to automatically throw pot users who violate their supervised release into the joint.
Judge Jack Weinstein said Thursday that he’s been too hard on those marijuana users — and that all ends now. The judge plans to weed out his own incarceration orders for the pot users, saying supervised release is a waste of time for probation officers and an undue burden for people who are getting their lives together after convictions and lockup.
Weinstein added he’s going to pare his supervised release terms generally.
The judge cut short a three-year supervised release term for Tyran Trotter, a 22-year-old man who’s on the straight and narrow — even though he confessed to smoking marijuana to keep “calm and on the right path.”
“If his supervision continues, he will probably end up in the almost endless cycle of supervised release and prison,” Weinstein wrote of the man, who pleaded guilty in 2016 to conspiracy to distribute heroin.
Weinstein’s 42-page ruling is about Trotter’s case but also looks at the big picture on marijuana, which is “becoming increasingly accepted by society.”
Without getting into his view of the pros and cons, Weinstein noted Brooklyn and Manhattan prosecutors aren’t pressing low-level pot cases. He also pointed to the NYPD’s new stance, in most cases, of giving summonses instead of making arrests for smoking pot. But for all that, Weinstein said, marijuana is illegal “for all purposes under federal law” and the federal probation officers view the drug as being as serious as other narcotics.
This all opens the door to unneeded supervised release violations and possible lockup for habitual smokers, the judge said.
About 13% of all supervised release revocations in Brooklyn and Long Island federal court have to do with drugs, Weinstein said. That’s even with the probation department’s “best efforts to use sanctions short of incarceration for habitual drug users.”
Weinstein noted he’s not alone in the dim view on mandatory supervised release revocation for drugs. In a 2014 survey, 85% of more than 650 federal judges said illegal possession of drugs shouldn’t automatically mean lockup.