For Illinoisan Roosevelt Myles, a marijuana conviction from the 1980s became part of a criminal record that’s followed him for decades.
Myles spent 28 years in prison for murder before a judge vacated his conviction on appeal and granted him a certificate of innocence, finding that no physical evidence linked him to the killing.
By the time Myles was released from prison in 2020, Illinois’s legal landscape regarding marijuana had shifted dramatically. The state legalized adult recreational use and possession of small amounts of marijuana under the Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act and created pathways for people to clear certain cannabis-related offenses from their records.
Myles was among those who benefited from the state’s reforms, which were designed, in part, to address the harm caused to some by the war on drugs. Last fall, with the help of attorneys at New Leaf Illinois, an online portal that helps people clear their marijuana records, he successfully petitioned to have his marijuana record sealed and his wrongful murder conviction expunged.
Months earlier, Myles had been denied a job working with children because of his criminal record, making the court’s decision feel like a turning point after what he described as hitting “rock bottom.”
“It was a great feeling,” Myles said of the expungement that took five years to happen.
Statewide data, however, suggest that most people don’t follow through. According to the Paper Prisons Initiative, a legal research group, an estimated 2.2 million people in Illinois were eligible for expungement or record sealing in 2021, but only about 10 percent had filed petitions.
