So now it's legal in Arizona to smoke Marijuana as of 2021. But just hold on a minute - what does that mean for you? Can you grow it? Sell it? Smoke in the car? Smoke on your walk in the park?
Now that Proposition 207 decriminalized the use of marijuana, DUI and Criminal Law Attorney Shawn B. Hamp breaks down the details. In this episode, you'll hear about the grey areas of the law, and the details about when, where, and how smoking marijuana can still get you into trouble.
Podcast Host and Family Law Attorney Billie Tarascio also asks the key questions for parents that partake in marijuana, and what that might mean for a family law case in the process.
So now it's legal in Arizona to smoke Marijuana as of 2021. But just hold on a minute - what does that mean for you? Can you grow it? Sell it? Smoke in the car? Smoke on your walk in the park?
Now that Proposition 207 decriminalized the use of marijuana, DUI and Criminal Law Attorney Shawn B. Hamp breaks down the details. In this episode, you'll hear about the grey areas of the law, and the details about when, where, and how smoking marijuana can still get you into trouble.
Podcast Host and Family Law Attorney Billie Tarascio also asks the key questions for parents that partake in marijuana, and what that might mean for a family law case in the process.
Billie Tarascio (00:29):
Hi, there it's Billie Tarascio from the modern divorce podcast. And today I am joined by another attorney friend of mine. Yes, it seems I have a lot of them, but they're fabulous people. And this is criminal law attorney. Sean HAMP. Sean, how you doing today? Hi Bailey. I'm doing very good. How are you? Good, good. Now you and I know each other from our national connections and you've got a presence in multiple States, right?
Shawn B Hamp (00:54):
No, actually by practices in Northern Arizona, but I I commute back and forth and split my time between Arizona and the East coast.
Billie Tarascio (01:03):
Got it. Got it. So you live on the East coast, but your practice is entirely in Arizona, correct? That's pretty cool. How did you end up doing that?
Shawn B Hamp (01:11):
Well we you know, with, it was a family decision and but you know, my firm is, is, is pretty pretty large and has a, a good presence all over Northern Arizona and came in Flagstaff and Prescott primarily. And I'll tell you what with well, you know, with COVID, it does make things a lot easier these days to work remotely and work with the co the courts. But we, we have we have a lot of, we have multiple offices. We have a large attorney firm lots of support staff. So we definitely help a lot of clients.
Billie Tarascio (01:47):
Well, that is awesome and wonderful. I know that I've sent a lot of clients your way, and I wanted to have you on today to talk about the legalization of marijuana and then also the impact of drugs and alcohol and what that can do to your family court cases. But as you known, as many of our listeners know in November Arizona passed a law legalizing marijuana. Now, what does that mean from your perspective as a criminal law attorney? Right.
Shawn B Hamp (02:16):
So yeah, basically this past November prop 207 was passed in Arizona, that's the smart and safe Arizona act. And it was the election results were finalize and, and codified and soon as those election results were were verified the law became inactive immediately active immediately. Okay. And essentially what prop two Oh seven does, is it decriminalizes marijuana to allow it for personal use? So previously several years ago, Arizona enacted medical marijuana now with the smart and safe Arizona act personal marijuana is legal for anyone over 21 years of age, and anyone can possess an ounce of marijuana or less legally without any repercussions. And they can also possess up to six plants per person to grow marijuana in their home and less than six plants per person up to 12 plants per household. So yeah, that's a big change and Arizona's following many other States that have also legalized marijuana in this past election cycle.
Billie Tarascio (03:36):
Yeah, absolutely. So I want to clarify something now. I know that there are not dispensary's here in Arizona until March, but right now, if somebody has marijuana that they got, you know, wherever either they were growing it or, or they got it in California or Las Vegas or Oregon it's legal, is that true?
Shawn B Hamp (03:56):
Right. So right now, currently there are dispensaries that dispense medical marijuana, and it is still illegal to sell marijuana to another individual, unless you're a licensed dispensary and the process to get a dispensary license has to go through the Arizona department of health services. And they're anticipating that they will allow dispensary's to start legally selling marijuana for personal use in March and April of this year. So that's kind of, it's like a 60 90 day timeline to get that process started. And it's anticipated that the first dispensary is two to sell legal marijuana for personal use will be the existing medical marijuana dispensary is because they have the infrastructure, the legal know-how to get certified. So they're anticipated to be the first major players in selling marijuana. So essentially right now is you cannot, you cannot buy, you cannot legally buy marijuana to possess. You essentially need to have a friend that's going to give it to you in case you want. Right. That's legal. And I believe so. I believe we could start growing it too, but you just can't legally buy it. So you can't train, you can't give money to someone to, to, to buy marijuana they'll change.
Billie Tarascio (05:26):
So what are the other impacts of this lots of people, are you allowed to walk around and vape marijuana? Like what are the restrictions?
Shawn B Hamp (05:35):
Yeah, there are several restrictions to it. So you're not allowed to consume marijuana publicly. You also, if you're going to grow it, you basically have to do it inside your home. So you're going to have to have some sort of, you know, indoor grow to grow the marijuana. Cause you cannot do that and you cannot have it out in your backyard. You can be seen by a plane or in public view. So there's, there's that restrictions. You can't smoke, you can't smoke marijuana public, but you still can have edibles in public. So, I mean, if you chew on brownies or, or gummy bears or whatever, how you enjoy your edibles, you can still do that in public.
Billie Tarascio (06:18):
Well, that's certainly interesting. And, and I know that this has come up a lot with clients, children, edibles are adorable, little gummies, right? And brownies and cookies. And it is, I have seen in my practice where children are getting into their parents' recreational marijuana and edibles, and it's causing some big problems. So in family law, we've got a couple of things to talk about, you know, can, can people now, you know, take advantage of using marijuana, however they want to, without any consequences to, to their family law case is one question because as you know, the law in family law says, if you have a conviction of drug or alcohol within the last 12 months, there's a presumption against joint legal decision making. So there's a presumption that the non convicted using parent be given sole legal decision-making. Now, if you can't get convicted, that goes away,
Shawn B Hamp (07:19):
Correct. That that would go away. And what's going on. What's happening right now is that prosecuting agencies are trying to get ahead of the law change by dismissing cases that were pending involving personal marijuana use. And I've seen a lot of cases with personal cases, getting dismissed. I even seen some sales cases getting drastically reduced, like the charges being reduced and resolved in some non non-tribal ways. So yeah, that's already having an impact and started in July. If you do have a personal marijuana conviction, you can apply to the court to get those previous charges dismissed and expunged. And that's, that's definitely new thing in Arizona because we there's really no there is no expungement in Arizona. If you get a criminal conviction, the best you can do is to get illegally set aside. Expungement is different. Not only does it set aside a conviction, it completely erases it from the record, whether you have an offense in the past year or the past several years, if there's a personal use case you can actually get that thing sealed.
Shawn B Hamp (08:36):
And the burden is on the government essentially to prove that that offense was not a personal possession case or a personal use. So this, those procedures are common. I anticipate that we're going to get a lot of clients. They're going to want to expunge the record. We already get a lot of clients that want to set aside their record, whether it's domestic violence or drug case or something. I think that's, that's going to be a big change. And it's, you know, it's, it's a good thing. You know, there's, like I said, you know, the trend in the country is to try to, you know, not do criminal reform, not just, not just marijuana reform, like criminal reform, like people want to give, you know, there's a lot of criminal justice reform and people wanted the criminalized, the consequences of punishment for drug offenses in general and other offenses and, you know, encourage more of their real rehabilitation aspect of criminal justice.
Shawn B Hamp (09:37):
So it's, this is more on that trend, which is a good thing. And I suspect that Arizona courts are going to liberally interpret some of these statutes. I think that you know, Arizona politically, Arizona's becoming more of a purple state as they say more blue than red, but Arizona has always had a really strong libertarian stance against government interference. And when the medical marijuana laws were passed in Arizona, the courts really liberally construed those, those, the new statutes. And they did everything they could to allow for medical marijuana to become the law in the state. And they really bucked some of the pushback that prosecuting agencies gave about medical marijuana. And they, they really, they, the courts really liberally supported medical marijuana. And I assume that they're going to do the same with personal possession laws as well. So
Billie Tarascio (10:37):
You are bringing up really fantastic points about understanding Arizona's culture. And it is this very libertarian culture. It's kind of anti-regulation, it's almost, it's, it's got an anti-government streak in it which is not the same as Oregon, where I'm from, which is extremely liberal in the very, in the, in, in the traditional sense. Arizona is not like that. Arizona is more rebellious towards government and in family, it's the same way where they don't want to know, unless there's something massive, massively wrong with one parent or another parent they want out of it. Each parent gets to decide to parent those children, how they want to, and in Oregon, where they also practiced law, they don't do family law that way. So it makes sense that not only in family court, but also in criminal court judges are like, look, unless there's a real issue that impacts the public safety or in, in my version, it's, you know, children's safety. I don't want to know people can do what they want, but they do have to deal with the statute. And the statute says, if there's been a conviction, there's a presumption against you. So taking the action to get that expunged through an attorney like you is, I would highly recommend to anyone who may go through a divorce or family law situation who has a conviction for marijuana. Now, if there's a conviction that involves marijuana and other things, is everything expunged or how does that work?
Shawn B Hamp (12:07):
That's a good question. I don't think we exactly know how that's gonna work. The marijuana offense generally when someone gets charged with personal possession of marijuana they also get charged with drug paraphernalia. Drug paraphernalia is anything that's used to ingest use, or store illegal drugs. So typically almost inevitably, if you get charged with marijuana, you also get charged with possession of drug paraphernalia and drug paraphernalia will also be included with getting that expunged as well. So those are usually the two charges that, that get put together. Now, if you get somebody who gets charged with possession of marijuana and maybe they had some sort of ancillary charge like a traffic offense, or maybe they got charged with like maybe domestic violence, it's a scenario where a police officer goes, go home and it's on a domestic violence call.
Shawn B Hamp (13:09):
And then they see marijuana in plain view and decide to charge him for both. My, my take is that they will seal the drug charge, but then the domestic violence charge would probably still appear on their record. And, but that, but that, that does raise a question too, is because police reports are supposed to be sealed under this new law, if you get a drug conviction. So some of these reports, police reports will include different types of offenses. And I assume that the whole police report would get sealed as well. Cause there'll be, be very difficult time consuming for a police agencies to, I don't know, a redactor please support tonight. I assume they're just going to seal the whole thing as far as the police reports go. But I think that someone has like an ancillary charge, like like a domestic violence charge and a drug offense that the attorney will probably move to seal the drug offense and probably ask the court to go ahead and set aside the accompanying charge that came with that offense.
Billie Tarascio (14:13):
Could someone be charged with reckless endangerment of their children just because they had possession of marijuana?
Shawn B Hamp (14:20):
You know, my experience, I've never seen something like that. I think I've seen I think those arguments about endangerment come up in like dependency court. I, you know, I've seen that, I see that it's like a neglect of the child. There's, there's basically an allegation of neglect of the child because of the parent's drug use, but that typically, and, you know, every once in a while I do see it come up when like it's usually CPS to a call and there's a lot of drugs in the home and maybe there's an accusation after selling and then there's children in the home too. I think I've seen that come up sometimes with that with an endangerment charge. It's definitely not typical. It's not typical for my clientele because you know, you know, I, I represent people that have the means to hire an attorney and sometimes those types of crimes those, some of those crimes, you know, are the folk, a lot of folks that can afford an attorney are get accused of different crimes that affect their demographics more than maybe somebody who's at a unfortunately might be at how do I say, usually someone's selling drugs.
Shawn B Hamp (15:39):
They're not doing well financially. And they probably don't have the means to hire a private lawyer. So I don't necessarily see those type of cases. I see a lot. I represent a lot of people who are transporting drugs or selling drugs per sales, possession, drugs for sale, and then some, and then sometimes they get a lot of cases where people get tickets for possession of marijuana. A lot of, a lot of my cases come up through the traffic stops scenarios, but I'm selling out of someone's home. Definitely. I mean, it does come up. I mean, when someone's selling math and stuff like that, I see, I see some obstacles throw in like an endangerment charge before.
Billie Tarascio (16:21):
So this is pretty interesting stuff. Now with alcohol, alcohol is legal, but if you are pass out drunk and not taking care of your children, that's of course going to affect your family law case now with marijuana does that happen? Do people get pass out? Can't take care of their kids stoned.
Shawn B Hamp (16:45):
Yeah. So that's interesting. So you're right. So when you try and figure out how marijuana is going to impact like the fam family law cases, and I, you know, I've done some family law in the past. So I kinda know from, I have some experience with how family law cases and criminal law cases kind of intertwine with each other, and definitely don't want to step on your toes Billy, about about it. But but I think what people need to think about is that alcohol is a substance and a lot of people are prone to substance abuse of alcohol and I'll cause legal. And so family law courts have already had, they already have to deal with substance abuse involving legal drugs, alcohol, right? So illegal drugs, and also like prescription drugs, you know, an individual can also be can abuse prescription drugs. So the family law context, there's already people already litigate substance abuse involving legal drugs.
Shawn B Hamp (17:41):
So in marijuana becomes legal. That's not going to change. I think what's going to happen is that there's still gonna be a stigma with use and those attitudes are going to change over time. And you know, I sit and I don't want to get too far off my point, but we talked about how judges or the courts in Arizona, libertarian, I'm talking about the appeals court. I mean, you're going to have trial judge. Each trial judge is going to be different. So it's important to have a lawyer who knows your judge, but there are going to be some judges that are going to be conservative and are going to be very resistant to legalize marijuana. They're still going to have some attitudes, perceptions about marijuana and about how people use it and how they perceive, how people abuse it. Marijuana is a drug. People can abuse it.
Shawn B Hamp (18:28):
I'm not a drug counselor, but I think a lot of people associate marijuana with low inhibition. So you might have somebody I'm not trying to stare at you, right? But he has somebody who's using marijuana excessively. Maybe they constantly possess more than an ounce in their home. Maybe they grow more than six plants, maybe a lower lowers their drive to be, to be supportive for their family and their children. As far as being a good earner, being attentive to children's needs and providing for them because they're stoned all the time. I mean, they're passed out on the couch, eating chips. So those are the types of things that I imagined would come up in a family law court cases. They would try to present a fact pattern to the judge that they're using marijuana. And they problem maybe point out like their spotty employment record, you know, how much they do in BI and dive and vibe with marijuana and their use, you know, do they smoke in front of children?
Shawn B Hamp (19:24):
How responsible is their use? Are they smoking in public? That's illegal, right. You know, people smoke in public and I'm sure that Arizona is going to spell is going to smell more stinky these days, but that's illegal. You're not allowed to do that. So I think that the family law attorney is going to have to point out, I think they're still going to make the abuse at someone's you know, substance, substance abusing and how it impacts the family law relationships. So some judges are going to be more, you're going to, it's going to be more persuasive to some judges, some family law judges, some judges are like, Hey, let's move on. It's 2021. You know, it's legal now, what's your, what's your deal? Why are you having a hard time with it? You know, why are you giving us such a hard time? So I think it's going to be important because that's how judges, when it came to medical marijuana, you know, that some judges gave different rulings about medical marijuana use and how that might impact the case. And I could see that happening in family law. It's going to take some time before these attitudes about legal marijuana changes and people might not ever come around to embrace in it. So to speak,
Billie Tarascio (20:29):
It is insane how much public opinion has changed. I was just recalling, you know, when I was in law school, I worked for the department of justice and we were doing termination of parental rights. And there was a case I worked on where these parents had their rights terminated and one of the issues was marijuana. And they said, they testified that they thought marijuana made them better parents. And it was so it was so laughable at that time. It was, it was such a ridiculous thing for them to say, like everyone around them thought that that was just absurd. And you could hear that now and have people not think it was absurd. It's just insane. How much things have changed with regards to marijuana use and our attitudes in the last 10 years. And I think you're right. It depends on the judge. We have to know the judge we're going in front of and, and the facts matter, you know, how you're using matters. Now, one thing that hasn't changed is you cannot drive high, right?
Shawn B Hamp (21:30):
Correct. That's, that's never changed. And you know, even that, even the laws pertaining to DUI and marijuana, even those things have changed over the years. And that started back with medical marijuana. So the new law, definitely it codifies that you can be convicted of a DUI if there is an active metabolite in your system and the government proves that it impaired your ability to drive to the slightest degree. And that's the current law, essentially, that's the current law, but now it's going to be codified. So it's in the statute. And that's evolved. So back in the day, if you had smoked marijuana and it was in your system, and it didn't even need to be an active metabolite in your system,
Billie Tarascio (22:25):
This metabolite. So
Shawn B Hamp (22:28):
When you consume marijuana the drug that's in your system that causes you to be high is a carboxy THC. Okay. And what happens is a drug has a half-life and it starts to metabolize in your body into elements that are not causing you impairment that are just the byproducts of having consumed it. And those things can stay in your system for a long time, for like 30 days. And when someone goes and gets a drug test, not only are they getting tested for the active metabolite, but throttle, the drug test can, can turn up the byproducts of, of smoking drugs and those things still stay in your system. So back in the day, you could get pulled over for DUI and you smoked a month ago, and then there's some things in your, in your urine and in your system that show that you did smoke and it has no impact on your driving, but you could still get convicted for that.
Shawn B Hamp (23:27):
And when a medical marijuana came into play, that kind of the courts changed their they changed their the view on that. And they essentially said, that's not good enough to have them a tablet, your system. The government has to show that it was an active metabolite, that it was that it was, it could cause impairment the new statute, codifies that what's also interesting with DUIs and marijuana is that there is no legal limit, at least in Arizona, for committing a DUI with marijuana, the government has to prove that there was an active metabolite in your system that could cause impairment. And then they have to prove that you were impaired to drive because there is no legal limit. I suppose, that that's going to change someday that someone will, will come up with some sort of arbitrary number about levels of marijuana in your system to say that you're per se guilty of a DUI.
Shawn B Hamp (24:29):
If you have that level, they're starting to come up with these levels in Canada right now. And then there's some States, there's some legislation they're trying to push it, push some legal limits. We don't have that yet in Arizona. It's going to take some time. I think that, you know, right now there's no hall. There's not a lot of studies about marijuana because it's still a class, one drug it's still federally illegal. There's not a whole lot of valid medical research about marijuana. Big. I think with the continual legalization, there will be more studies about marijuana. And I think they will come up with a legal limit. Defense attorneys are going to always argue that that legal limit is fraught with issues. And there's not going to be, it's going to be arbitrary. Like they argue that the current legal limits are, but alcohol or for marijuana specifically, there's definitely, there's definitely debate about marijuana.
Shawn B Hamp (25:29):
What the, what, what limits, what levels can cause impairment. And I'm just saying that as a defense attorney, we're going to argue whether it's marijuana or alcohol, that those, those arbitrary limits are just arbitrary. They don't, it marijuana and alcohol affects people in different ways physiologically it's it's, it's when that's what DUI attorneys do when they go into court. And they argue about DUI that just, they argue that there was no impairment. And that's, that's not going to change as far as the DUI defense practice. So I know that I know the DUIs. Any you, by the way, also add on you cannot smoke marijuana while you're driving. That's illegal. That's codified. And then it, officer pulls you over and smells marijuana that is reasonable suspicion to do a DUI investigation. So like again, no smoking in your car, but obviously smells it. Even if they smell it on you, like, you know, your clothes or whatever, I presume that they will still do a DUI investigation just because of that smell. If that ha that occurs. So
Billie Tarascio (26:44):
Let's get legalistic here for a minute. There's this, there's this thing called strict liability offenses and strict liability means like, if you run the stoplight, you're guilty of, you know, you're guilty, period. It doesn't matter your intent. Like you did it, it's strict liability. Right. And so, and I think that DUI is the same way. If, if your blood alcohol comes in at over 0.08, there's, you're strictly liable for DUI. Right. it doesn't matter if you were, if you personally were impaired,
Shawn B Hamp (27:15):
Right, that's the legal limit.
Billie Tarascio (27:17):
If, if there's no legal limit with marijuana, then do the cops need to prove, or does the government need to prove that this individual was impaired?
Shawn B Hamp (27:29):
Exactly. So the government does have to prove the impairment because there is no per se strict liability limit on marijuana use. Now labs can, can test for the level of THC in someone's body. So there, there we have the, the technical capability to, to test for those levels, but there's just no scientific consensus on what causes impairment for a person. And so right now, the government basically has to prove two things that there was an active metabolite in your system, you know, active THC, and they have to prove that you were impaired. So an officer would the government and the officer would present testimony, for example, that you're just to show impairment, they would show two things. They would either show that you're driving badly. Or they would say that you did some field sobriety tests and that you perform badly. And then they would argue that that is evidence of impairment in DUI.
Billie Tarascio (28:36):
So that was the next thing I wanted to ask you about are the sobriety tests the same for marijuana and alcohol?
Shawn B Hamp (28:46):
Yes and no. Some of the tests are the same. And then there's some additional tests that an officer who has more advanced training who's a drug recognition expert could do some roadside tests to show that you're impaired by drugs. A lot, a lot of the traditional field sobriety tests will show impairment. And that's what ha that's what happens now. So somebody would get pulled over. Maybe they were driving too slow or whatever, or whatever bet swerving or whatever. They'll pull them over. And the officer would do the field sobriety test. They would fail the walk and turn. They want stay on the white line. They you know, do walk and turn one leg stand in HGN, horizontal gaze nystagmus with, with the eye test. So someone could fail those. Then the officer will take them in. They will do usually they'll do a test, do an on the Intoxilyzer.
Shawn B Hamp (29:44):
They will blow up a zeros 0.0, zero, zero. And so they have no alcohol in their system. At that point, the officer will ask them to submit to a blood test and they'll take their blood. They could do a urine test, but nobody does urine tests. It's all blood tests. And the blood is what will rule out, either confirm or rule out the presence of illegal drugs or illegal drugs and marijuana and their system. So cause they, they test for legal drugs and illegal drugs when they do a blood. So that won't change. That's, that's how the that's how DUI investigations are done now because you know, it's, it's, you can also came in at a DUI, obviously with, with, by consuming drugs, legal or not.
Billie Tarascio (30:30):
W should, if someone finds themselves in that situation, should they, do they have any option to not submit to a blood test?
Shawn B Hamp (30:39):
Yes. So you can, if an officer asks you to consent to a blood test, you can refuse to consent to a blood test. But if you do that, there are some immediate consequences because civilly, you could lose your license for 12 months. If you refuse to submit, and officers can also get a search warrant for your blood. So if you do refuse nine times out of 10 doctors, just going to go ahead and get a search warrant and that's going to get granted and they're going to get your blood anyway, in a marijuana DUI case. I think that's the scenario is that someone will probably not have alcohol in their system. They would have failed field sobriety tests that gave the officer probable cause to arrest them. They will submit to an ATOC saliva tests that might show no alcohol. And then they'll still get that blood test because officer can have somebody submit to multiple tests to gather evidence for a DUI.
Billie Tarascio (31:41):
Wow. It, it, to me, what's clear, is there still a lot? We don't know. And there's a lot like in terms of marijuana, how it affects you, how, how long should you wait after you smoked before you drive? Like we know we're, we've been told, you know, you can have one drink an hour and obviously that's different for people, but that's the general, general knowledge, general advice that you're given. If you have more than one drink an hour, you shouldn't drive, we don't have that type of information to give people when they partake in the legal marijuana.
Shawn B Hamp (32:11):
Yes. Well, I, I believe that in my experience, I have not seen a significant decline in alcohol DUI cases. And I think that marijuana DUI cases are they're trickling up, but I suspect that there's just going to be more and more marijuana DUI cases, the more as more and more people start to partake of it. So I can, I think it's going to increase whether they, whether the government imposes a legal limit, a strict liability limit for marijuana in your system and driving that could take years before that, that happens and probably will happen at some point. But yeah, it's just going to go up and, you know, it's going to be arbitrary at times. In my opinion, it's going to be arbitrary. Whether the officer thinks somebody is impaired by marijuana, you know, they could have smoked, you know, six, 10 hours ago still have that odor on their person.
Shawn B Hamp (33:12):
I suppose them over for something innocuous, all of a sudden it becomes this full-blown DUI investigation. It just goes downhill from there. Yeah. We're definitely going to see more, more marijuana DUIs without a doubt. And as you know, a DUI can definitely impact family law case is if you have a DUI within I believe, 12 months or so, there's some legal presumptions with that, that the parent is not, cannot, is not entitled to make some legal decision-making about the child in custody. So yeah, this is going to go up marijuana DUIs are going to go up without a doubt.
Billie Tarascio (33:49):
So my big takeaways from this are, if you've got a conviction in the past for possession or use of marijuana, go see an attorney about an expungement. That's the good news. Right? Right. How, how hard are those to get right
Shawn B Hamp (34:05):
Expungements? I don't think it would be hard at all. It's pretty clear cut the the, what the law says. There isn't a Supreme court is giving guidelines to the lower courts on how to administratively proceed with it. And currently my experience was set asides, getting at your criminal conviction set aside is not that hard. Alrighty. So I think with the new expungement laws, it's going to be pretty straight forward. I think what someone has to do consulting with the attorney is going to be good because the attorney is going to do a little bit of investigation to see if you qualify. You know, they will draft the petition for you. Maybe the proposed order for the judge to sign off on for it. You know, there are some facts that need to be kind of investigated, you know, was it a personal case?
Shawn B Hamp (35:03):
Was it less than two, two and a half ounces? Did the police support even say what the amount was when you got arrested? I was thinking about this and prepare preparing for this show is that when a lot of people get busted for marijuana, they might have several joints or joint on them, but options don't weigh every single marijuana case. So I think that there's going to be some people that are going to qualify. They might be in the gray area and still get an expungement. I think it's going to be pretty liberally, construed and administered. Do
Billie Tarascio (35:38):
You, I know you're in Northern Arizona. Do you have the ability to help people all over the state or really only locally in Northern
Shawn B Hamp (35:47):
I, you know we help people. We do help people throughout the state and then for the folks that maybe are in courts that we're not familiar with, we will refer them out to colleagues that can help them with wonderful, but definitely no attorneys all over the state. That's for sure.
Billie Tarascio (36:05):
Okay. So how can people get ahold of you if they're ready to move forward with this expungement?
Shawn B Hamp (36:11):
We definitely will welcome their calls. They can reach us they can visit our website, which is Hamplaw.com. And then I'm on all the social media handles is at Hamplaw. But just call our office it's (928) 753-6868. And we'll definitely have someone that will talk to them and can evaluate their case and can quickly tell them if it's something that we can output, help them with or not.
Billie Tarascio (36:41):
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. It's been super informative and very interesting to me and I really appreciate it,
Shawn B Hamp (36:48):
Billie, It was great talking with you, enjoy your podcasts. And I don't know, at times it just felt like I was nerding out on some of this stuff, but it was fun.
Billie Tarascio (36:58):
We nerded out together! Have a great day. Thank you.