Last year, on April 20, police pulled over Tommy Yu for failure to signal while he was driving in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. An officer noticed Yu had a forged Department of Transportation parking plaque and searched his car, finding what he said were hundreds of ecstasy pills and 18 large bags of cannabis weighing more than 20 pounds, according to testimony.
In July, Yu had another run-in with police. Officers again searched his car and allegedly found another 14 bags of marijuana weighing more than 10 pounds, in addition to ecstasy and ketamine. New York’s Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act legalized possession of less than three ounces of weed in 2021. Yu was accused of having much more than that in both incidents, resulting in multiple felony charges of criminal possession of cannabis and possession of a controlled substance.
But in October, Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge H. Jacob Moses threw out all nine of the cannabis-related charges against Yu, citing a wrinkle in the wording of the current cannabis law. Another Brooklyn judge made a similar call in July when reviewing the charges against someone arrested during a raid of an unlicensed cannabis shop. That case was dismissed and sealed.
Citing those rulings, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez now says his office will no longer prosecute New Yorkers for having too much weed. His decision comes amid increased efforts across the state to crack down on unlicensed weed stores without bringing criminal charges.
“Our office litigated this issue for the purpose of getting clarification on how the new law is interpreted by the courts,” Oren Yaniv, a spokesperson for Gonzalez, said in a statement last month. “Based on how the law is written, and in accordance with judicial findings, we can no longer prosecute weight-based marijuana possession cases.”
The rulings revolve around how police officers weigh the cannabis they seize. The judges wrote that authorities must calculate the weight of the parts of the…
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