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Watch: LAS Breaks Down Expungement of Marijuana Arrest Records

Emma Goodman, a staff attorney with The Legal Aid Society’s Special Litigation Unit, was featured in interviews for the Pix11 News and WCNY’s The Capitol Pressroom discussing the expungement of low-level marijuana convictions that will follow in the wake of the passing of New York’s new marijuana legalization measures. Advocates say that the new legalization law could expunge well over 100,000 records from just the last two decades alone.

“The (application-based sealing) process is hard so it’s just amazing that finally these records are going to be expunged, but it’s kind of absurd that they were holding people back in the first place,” Goodman said. “He’s doing really, really well and so doesn’t feel bitter at this point, but if I were him, I would because the suffering that he endured for something so insignificant is so ridiculous and he shouldn’t have had to go through that.”

“We have to make sure that the expungement is actually being implemented properly, even though it’s automatic,” Goodman continued. “That’s going to take some monitoring by people like me to make sure they do it.”

Watch the full clip below.