Bloomberg Law
Dec. 23, 2021, 5:58 PM

Low-Level Pot Crime No Cause for Deportation, Appeals Court Says

Mike Leonard
Mike Leonard
Legal Reporter

A Jamaican woman living legally in the U.S. wasn’t eligible for deportation based on low-level cannabis offenses, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled, saying her convictions for trafficking “a very small amount of marijuana” didn’t reflect “crimes involving moral turpitude.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals, which affirmed the order of removal against Pattie Page Walcott over her convictions a decade ago for possession with intent to distribute less than two pounds of marijuana and a related crime.

Judge A. Wallace Tashima, writing for a divided ...

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