AUGUSTA, Maine — More Mainers will soon qualify for sealing their past criminal records, including those with marijuana convictions from before Maine legalized the drug in 2017.
The changes that Gov. Janet Mills signed into law in April grew out of recommendations from the Criminal Records Review Committee, a 29-member panel featuring lawmakers and representatives of numerous legal, law enforcement, nonprofit and media groups.
Each proposal is part of an ongoing effort backed in recent years by both progressives such as House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, and libertarian-minded Republicans such as Sen. Eric Brakey, R-Auburn, to reduce the stigma and hurdles that Mainers face while trying to move on after completing sentences, particularly for low-level crimes. Sealing criminal records of those convictions would hide them from public view.
But not everyone walked away with the sense that all the work is done, as one recommendation that failed to advance this year called for the automatic sealing of old marijuana convictions.
One of the laws taking effect in July will add Class D marijuana possession and cultivation convictions from before Jan. 30, 2017, to the list of crimes eligible for sealing if people apply. That date is when Maine’s statute allowing people at least 21 years old to possess up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana and grow six mature plants took effect. Maine voters legalized recreational marijuana in a 2016 referendum.
“People convicted of misdemeanor marijuana crimes that are no longer treated as crimes should certainly be allowed to move for the sealing of those prior convictions,” Augusta lawyer Matt Morgan testified in March on behalf of the Maine Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Another measure will remove the age requirements for sealing criminal histories. Current law in Maine says only people who were between the ages of 18 and 28 at the time of committing a low-level crime may seek to seal the criminal history information at least four years after completing the sentence.
The new law Mills signed after it passed each chamber mostly along party lines — a few Republicans joined Democrats in supporting it — will allow people of any age to apply to have their criminal records sealed as long as they have not been convicted of another crime since completing their sentence and do not have any other pending charges.
Support for the change came from an array of groups, including prosecutors and the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition. Peter Lehman, the coalition’s legislative director who was previously incarcerated, testified he has worked with hundreds of people who are burdened repeatedly by criminal histories when seeking jobs, housing and even recovery services.
“We also want to emphasize that the burden of a criminal record falls most heavily on the poor and racial and ethnic minorities who are overrepresented in Maine’s prisons,” Lehman said in March. “The northern, poorest and most rural counties are overrepresented in the Maine prisons partly from the same dynamic.”
Another measure still awaiting a decision from Mills will make the Criminal Records Review Committee permanent, rather than dissolving it this year. Permanent status will allow the committee to continue to review laws and procedures surrounding criminal history information and make further recommendations to lawmakers and state agencies.
Lehman, with the prisoner advocacy coalition, said advocates and others who have reviewed Maine’s criminal record policies realized “the issues involved are so fundamental to achieving justice that an ongoing study and careful temperate action is necessary.”
One proposal from Brakey, the Auburn Republican, did not win approval this session despite the review committee backing it. It would create a process to automatically seal records of all misdemeanor possession and cultivation convictions that occurred between an electronic records system launching in 2001 and when voters approved adult use in 2016.
But the Maine Judicial Branch expressed concerns automatic sealing could worsen the state’s court case backlog. And the Maine Press Association, of which the Bangor Daily News is a member, opposed the automated aspect while noting past court cases in the U.S. have found that to violate the First Amendment.
