Charlotte is taking a new approach to drug cases. It could change lives.

Devna Bose
·9 min read

In most cases, when you’re caught with drugs, you’re charged with possession and sent to jail.

For the rest of your life, you have to pay for the offense. It’s harder for you to get a job, harder for you to find housing, harder for you to succeed.

But in Mecklenburg County, more people are getting a second chance.

Today, your charges might get dismissed, or you’ll be sent to a rehabilitation program — thanks to a new policy enacted by the District Attorney Spencer Merriweather’s office in November.

The pandemic halted jury trials in Mecklenburg County last year, and in an attempt to address the resulting backlog of homicide cases, Merriweather’s office isn’t prosecuting non-violent, low-level drug crimes.

The DA’s decision to shift prosecutor time from drug cases to higher-priority violent offenses was a quick response to the pandemic, but it mimics reforms advocates have long been calling for.

Black and brown people are arrested at disproportionately higher rates for drug crimes, largely due to overpolicing of their neighborhoods. In addition, they’re prosecuted more harshly and stopped more frequently.

With prosecutors taking a different approach on drug cases, the results could be life changing.

It already has been for some.

A chance at redemption

Valerie Mason was just a teen when she went to foster care for the first time.

From 14 to 18, she was in and out of foster homes after her mother was arrested and sent to prison. Mason would run away at the first opportunity.

“I grew up knowing how to survive,” she said. “My mom always provided a roof over my head until she ended up going to prison. Then, I didn’t have anyone to provide it but myself.”

Mason was arrested for the first time at the age of 17. She’s now 24.

She had been around drugs all her life, she said, but she started smoking marijuana in middle school. Mason was caught and sentenced to probation, so she quit. But years later, in an abusive relationship, she turned to cocaine, ecstasy and Xanax because they “numbed the pain.”

Mason’s story is an example of how drugs and poverty and race and crime collide in America, how they’re impossible to untangle.

Black people in America are swept into the criminal justice system at disproportionate rates, and then released into society with significantly less rights than before, permanently.

The ACLU’s Kristie Puckett-Williams knows that cycle well herself.

In fact, Merriweather was the same prosecutor from the DA’s office that sentenced her for drug charges years ago.

It was only after multiple arrests that Puckett-Williams found her recovery. She said if a policy like Merriweather’s existed back then, it might not have taken so many years or so many tries to get it right.

“If this was an option for me, I wouldn’t be a habitual felon. I wouldn’t be disengaged from my humanity,” she said. “A felony charge can disenfranchise someone from their humanity in hundreds of different ways.”

Once someone has a felony conviction, they are no longer eligible for SNAP or food stamps benefits, they are no longer exempt from employment discrimination, they are barred from voting in some states and it’s nearly impossible to acquire housing.

Incarceration is directly linked to poverty. Not only are low-income individuals incarcerated at higher rates, after being released, it’s difficult for formerly incarcerated people to meaningfully contribute to a household’s income. The cycle makes it challenging to escape that poverty.

When Mason heard about her charges being dropped last fall, belly slightly rounded with her daughter, now a month old, she was shocked.

“I had been praying that they got dismissed because I was pregnant. I was like, ‘I can’t go to jail while being pregnant. I can’t have her in jail,’” she said. “I knew I was about to bring a life into the world. I didn’t want her to miss out on nothing because of the bad decisions I made.

“I think this is brilliant. You’re giving someone a chance to redeem themselves.”

Back to the wall

Merriweather recalls being in California a couple of years ago when he heard the Santa Clara district attorney explaining a major shift he’d made in prosecuting drug cases.

The attorney, Jeff Rosen, said his office used recovery courts and drug treatment courses to deal with the root of the issue in the community. Many of the drug cases his prosecutors had seen stemmed from a public health crisis, not a wave of crime.

“I thought this guy was nuts,” Merriweather recalls. “I remember thinking at the time, ‘What in the world would justify that? What kind of violent crime problem would justify that change in approach?’ And I found out. An unprecedented backlog.”

Charlotte had one of its deadliest years in 2020. Violent crime increased by 15% last year, and 123 homicides were reported — the highest ever for the city — despite overall crime decreasing. Though the murder rate is substantially lower than in the early 90s, when Charlotte’s population was far smaller, deadly violence is the worse it’s been in a decade.

The record high numbers combined with the pandemic halting jury trials left Merriweather with no other options, he said.

His office released a statement in November that made clear it would no longer prosecute simple, non-violent drug possession cases, instead refocusing on recovery, especially for cases where it’s clear addiction is a fueling factor.

The approach is aimed at freeing up limited resources that would then be re-circuited to violent crimes.

The new policy looks a lot like the reforms criminal justice activists have been advocating for decades. And though it’s taken the pandemic for these changes to happen, advocates like Puckett-Williams say they’re grateful the policies have changed.

“The DA’s done a great job of addressing concerns we’ve had for many years,” she said. “Of course, it’s disappointing it takes something like COVID-19 for people to consider the humanity of substance-using people. That’s sad. But it’s better late than never.”

But Merriweather doesn’t want to call these changes “reforms” — that’s not how he sees it. His back was to the wall.

“I don’t want to get caught up in labels,” he said. “But faced with unprecedented circumstances, this is what I’ve chosen to do.”

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Just the beginning

While prosecutors are now far less likely to take a drug case to court, CMPD says they will not stop making those arrests entirely.

“There are going to be times when certain individuals need to be taken off the streets so they’re not harming our citizens,” CMPD Chief Johnny Jennings said. The police chief says he talks with the district attorney about some cases — like drug charges connected to suspected gang activity — that he feels must be fully prosecuted and not dismissed, or routed through recovery courts.

Higher arrest and incarceration rates for marginalized communities are not because of increased drug use — it’s often because of law enforcement focus on communities of color.

“A lot of the areas we focus on are hot spot crime locations, are impoverished neighborhoods and minority neighborhoods,” Jennings said in an interview last month.

But Jennings acknowledged that the department hasn’t been able to arrest their way out of increasing drug cases in Mecklenburg, and that he’s exploring ways to “give officers more options.”

“We have to reevaluate internally and change the culture of arresting our way out of crime,” he said. “We’ve been doing that for almost 30 years, and we’re having the same issues since I came on 30 years ago. The goal is to have officers with options.”

One option advocates want: Reduce drug arrests altogether, especially in light of the DA’s decision.

“The long lasting effects of being charged, especially in Charlotte, will make everything difficult for you,” Kenny Robinson said. “And it’s victimless, much of the time. It’s things like marijuana, and when that’s against a minority, that small charge has an effect you can’t undo.”

Robinson’s mother was addicted to heroin, and then crack when it ravaged the country’s Black community in the ‘80s. She lost all her children as a result, and decades later, Robinson was arrested himself. He now runs Freedom Fighting Missionaries, an organization that helps formerly incarcerated people adjust as they return to the community.

Jennings argues that people have the right to want people doing drugs out of their neighborhoods. Merriweather says police officers will still make arrests.

“The decision I’ve made is a prosecutorial one. The law is still the law. I understand our law enforcement has a responsibility to the community,” Merriweather said. “If someone is doing dope in their yard, people in the community believe law enforcement can intercede. They have every right to.

“I understand they have a job to do.”

But Puckett-Williams and Robinson point to the ongoing risks Black people face when interacting with law enforcement. Even a low-level drug arrest or petty crime can have a fatal ending.

“George Floyd didn’t rob a bank or nothing serious to be dead. We all know what that kind of confrontation brings,” Robinson said, referring to Floyd’s death at the hands of police after a store owner called police saying Floyd had used a counterfeit $20 bill.

Still, Robinson applauds Merriweather’s change on drug crimes. According to the district attorney, such a change could be long-lasting — because it will likely take many years to clear the murder case backlog in court.

“This will help people because before, it didn’t exist,” Robinson said. “No matter how small it is, this is something to be applauded.”

It’s enough for him that Mason got to deliver her baby in a hospital and return home, not to a jail cell. It’s enough for him that more Charlotteans will have a second chance. It’s enough for him that minorities, especially, will be able to avoid incarceration and hopefully find recovery.

It’s enough — for now.

“We applaud the efforts, but we’re still going to be demanding more as it pertains to the minorities who are struggling. The community, we can’t be satisfied,” he said. “This is just the beginning.”

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