Washington State will spend nearly $100 million to vacate an estimated 350,000 prior drug convictions and reimburse legal fees to people who were prosecuted under laws that the state Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional in 2021.
The state Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) announced on Monday that it would be launching the Blake Refund Bureau next month, facilitating the relief in coordination with “local courts, county clerks, public defenders, prosecutor, impacted individuals, advocacy groups and other stakeholders.”
The novel reimbursement fund is being created following the state Supreme Court’s landmark 2021 ruling that found the state’s criminal code for drug possession crimes was unconstitutionally flawed because it didn’t take require proof that a person “knowingly” committed the offense—creating a situation where people could be criminalized for inadvertent possession.
The ruling effectively nullified the state’s drug possession criminalization law, though the governor has since enacted a bill passed by the legislature that reinstates prohibition, with statutory language fixes to pass constitutional muster and lower penalties for possession compared to the previous law.
For the hundreds of thousands of people who were caught up in the legal system under the prior statute, however, relief is on the way.
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