B4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, MARCH 1 , 2022
Marijuana Justice.
“This allows us more time to
organize with our communities
and inform communities on the
nuances of the legalization pro-
posals so that they can come back
stronger to really support the pri-
ority of supporting those most im-
pacted by the war on drugs,” Higgs
Wise said.
The now-dead bill also included
provisions on resentencing for
those imprisoned on marijuana-
related charges, but a separate bill
tackling that issue is still moving
through the House. Another sub-
committee, which considered that
bill Monday afternoon, voted to
solicit recommendations on re-
sentencing from the Virginia De-
partment of Criminal Justice Ser-
vices, with lawmakers hoping to
come to a compromise by Friday.islation was the only vehicle to
establish a regulated, equitable
adult-use market, and there’s a
real cost of not establishing an
adult cannabis marketplace. Illicit
cannabis sales will continue to
grow, and the illicit market will
balloon.”
Marijuana Justice, an organiza-
tion advocating for an equitable
cannabis industry in Virginia, had
been fighting the legislation. It
argued that some new provisions
of the bill, such as early sales, could
make it difficult for minority busi-
ness owners to break into the in-
dustry.
Executive Director Chelsea
Higgs Wise said she was encour-
aged by the outcome to push the
bill to next year, though she recog-
nized that Republican priorities
will probably diverge from those oftime.
“It was kind of like buying a
really old car,” Shipley said. “You
knew it had some problems, but
then the more you get under the
hood, the worse and worse it gets.
And it’s just going to take more
work than what we can do in one
session to fix this thing.”
The bill’s main sponsor, Sen.
Adam P. Ebbin (D-Alexandria),
said he was frustrated by Republi-
cans’ blocking of the bill — and
their rationale. Most of the bill’s
framework, he noted, had carried
over from last year.
“There was a lot of thought that
was put into it. And to say it’s too
complicated for them is really not
an acceptable excuse when they
had a year to read the bill and a
year to come up with their own
alternative,” Ebbin said. “This leg-er docketed its own marijuana
bills. Monday was the first time
this year the House voted in any
form on the legalization bill.
Last year, Republicans opposed
Democrats’ legalization efforts, es-
pecially some social equity aspects
of the legislation, such as diverting
tax revenue to a fund to help com-
munities affected by dispropor-
tionate drug-law enforcement. But
after Republicans took over the
House and governorship this year,
GOP leaders, including Gov. Glenn
Youngkin, had indicated they were
prepared to address marijuana
legislation, acknowledging that
the law still needed work to set up
the commercial market.
On Monday, Garren Shipley,
spokesman for House Speaker
Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah),
said that work will require moreket amidst the backdrop of legal-
ization in Virginia, we are basically
providing a year for the growth
and strengthening of the illicit
market,” Del. Dawn M. Adams (D-
Richmond) said Monday. “And the
longer we wait to have a regulated
market, I think the harder it will be
to take control or even compete
with that illicit market.”
Early sales became one of the
most debated parts of the marijua-
na discussion in Richmond, with
some social equity advocates and
small hemp processors in the state
voicing concern that a head start
could shut small and minority
business owners out of the market.
But the outlook for recreational
marijuana in Virginia had re-
mained a mystery for much of this
year’s legislative session, as the
newly GOP-controlled House nev-a measure making it legal for
p eople 21 or older to possess up to
an ounce of marijuana and culti-
vate up to four marijuana plants in
their household, making Virginia
one of 18 states, plus the District of
Columbia, to legalize recreational
marijuana. But the complex legis-
lation still left it illegal to buy or
sell cannabis, since retail sales
were not slated to begin until
2024, giving the state time to build
a regulated commercial market.
This year, Democratic delegates
and senators from both parties
pushed to speed up the timeline, to
give consumers a safe and regulat-
ed way to buy marijuana and miti-
gate the black market.
“If we don’t have a bill that gives
us a well-regulated adult-use mar-
MARIJUANA FROM B1
Virginia House Republicans hold o≠ on massive bill on legal marijuana
comfortable sponsoring their tes-
timony again, which is not a small
challenge.”
As for the pandemic-related
backlog of cases, Graves said, “I
think we’re making good prog-
ress,” even after a spike in corona-
virus infections, caused by the
omicron variant, recently stalled
the full reopening of the courts.
“Our partners on the bench are
firmly committed to working
through the backlog,” he said,
“and our management team on
the Superior Court side, which is
incredibly strong, have great
plans for how they’re going to get
us through this.”
“There’s a trend line for getting
there,” he said.
When Graves arrived in No-
vember, after a period of historic
turmoil for the office, he was the
fifth U.S. attorney for the city in 21
months and the first in that span
to be formally nominated by the
White House and confirmed by
the Senate. In preceding years,
President Donald Trump had tar-
geted the office over its handling
of politically explosive prosecu-
tions of Trump allies and foes.
The Justice Department shift-
ed out Trump’s initial appointee,
Jessie K. Liu, in early 2020, and
her successor was removed amid
controversy over the sentencing
of Trump confidant Roger Stone
for obstructing Congress and wit-
ness intimidation. Justice Depart-
ment officials had pushed for a
relatively lenient sentencing rec-
ommendation for Stone, prompt-
ing resignations by prosecutors
who were handling the case in the
U.S. attorney’s office.
Two career government law-
yers then served as temporary U.S.
attorneys, and neither could dis-
pel the perception that the office
had become toxically politicized.
Considering all that, plus the
pandemic, plus the daunting scale
of the Capitol riot investigation,
Graves said, he did not expect to
see happy faces when he first
showed up for work. But he got a
“pleasant surprise,” he said.
“The people here continue to be
incredibly dedicated and engaged
with soldiering on through all
these challenges,” he said. “Morale
is better than I could have possi-
bly hoped for, given all the chal-
lenges that people are dealing
with personally and professional-
ly.”by a consultant confirmed long-
standing concerns about mis-
management in the DFS, includ-
ing its firearms unit, where ballis-
tics examiners were “not qualified
to render accurate, common
source determinations,” the con-
sultant said.
The DFS director resigned, and
Bowser pledged to overhaul the
department. Meanwhile, the U.S.
attorney’s office has turned to out-
side experts for forensic analyses.
“That does not come without
costs, both federal dollar costs ...
and also the cost in time, because
we’re going to independent labs,
and frankly there aren’t that many
of them,” Graves said.
“We also obviously have con-
cerns with all of the cases in which
we’ve relied on [DFS] testimony
in the past, making sure the evi-
dence relied on, the opinions that
we’ve relied on, can be indepen-
dently corroborated,” he said,
adding that his office is “also
thinking through what we’re go-
ing to need to see before we’reness to talk about shared strate-
gies as strong as it currently is,” he
said. “There were many times, 10
to 15 years ago when I was pros-
ecuting violent crimes, that you
had strong law enforcement part-
ners [but] each of them was kind
of rowing in their own direction.”
Despite that coordination,
Graves said, plenty of obstacles
remain to improving public safety
and the administration of justice
in the District, including the doc-
umented failings of the D.C. De-
partment of Forensic Sciences
(DFS), which runs the city’s crime
lab, and continuing pandemic-
related slowdowns in federal and
D.C. courts, resulting in moun-
tains of backlogged cases. Social
disruptions caused by the health
crisis also have contributed to
spikes in shootings, carjackings
and other crimes in cities nation-
wide, authorities say.
After the crime lab lost its ac-
creditation last spring and ceased
handling evidence for D.C. police
and prosecutors, an investigationtiative, launched last year by May-
or Muriel E. Bowser (D) and billed
as a public health effort rather
than purely an enforcement strat-
egy. A consultant to the Building
Blocks program studied homi-
cides and shootings in the District
over specific periods to determine
the characteristics of the city’s
most violent offenders and the
reasons for the gunfire. The idea is
to find ways of curbing violence by
developing a deeper understand-
ing of the motives behind it.
Graves, a 2001 Yale Law School
graduate who left the U.S. attor-
ney’s office in 2016 to reenter
private practice, recalled that D.C.
police and federal law enforce-
ment agencies did not always
work together seamlessly during
his earlier tenure. Since return-
ing, he said, he has noticed that
interagency cooperation is vastly
improved, which helps the job of
stemming bloodshed on the
streets.
“I’ve never seen the lines of
communication and the willing-prosecuting violations of munici-
pal law such as murder, sexual
assault and drug dealing. Those
cases are handled in D.C. Superior
Court.
In that sense, the top federal
prosecutor in the capital city plays
a much larger role in protecting
community safety at the street-
corner level than other U.S. attor-
ney’s offices in the nation.
Graves, 46, said that as a pros-
ecutor in the office for nine years,
beginning in 2007 in Superior
Court, he witnessed effective
strategies for combating violence
in city neighborhoods, including
targeting “the handful of individ-
uals” who cause a disproportion-
ate amount of crime. As in the
past, he said, prosecutors will fo-
cus on identifying and “proactive-
ly building cases involving those
individuals, as opposed to just
reacting and waiting for incidents
to come in and hoping you have
the witnesses and the evidence.”
The approach seems to dovetail
with the Building Blocks DC ini-specific cases — including the trial
of alleged riot participant Guy
Wesley Reffitt, which began Mon-
day with jury selection in U.S.
District Court in Washington —
Graves said in the wide-ranging
session with reporters and editors
that he is confident the Jan. 6
defendants can receive fair trials
in the community where the dead-
ly civil disorder occurred.
Reffitt, of Texas, who allegedly
has ties to a right-wing extremist
group, is accused of storming the
Capitol while carrying a holstered
pistol. He will be the first of the
roughly 750 defendants to face a
jury, which will be made up of
registered voters in the over-
whelmingly Democratic city. So
far, about 210 people have pleaded
guilty to various crimes in the
investigation.
“We know that there were ...
probably somewhere around
2,000 people, depending on how
you count it, who were in a re-
stricted area” of the Capitol as the
mayhem unfolded, Graves said.
“Now, how much we’ll be able to
identify the individuals who have
yet to be identified, we’ll just have
to see.”
In a written update in early
February, the office said the FBI
was trying to identify more than
350 people “believed to have com-
mitted violent acts on the Capitol
grounds, including over 250 who
assaulted police officers.”
Congress could reach an omni-
bus spending deal soon that
would allow the U.S. attorney’s
office to hire more people “who
would work exclusively” on Jan. 6
cases in a reorganized, stand-
alone “Capitol siege section,”
Graves said. Senate and House
appropriators have voted to fund
much of a Biden-requested budg-
et increase for the Justice Depart-
ment that would to add up to 100
positions and 60 prosecutors to
work on countering domestic ter-
rorism. The department said that
would include the surge in cases
from the Capitol attack.
With about 350 lawyers, the
U.S. attorney’s office in the Dis-
trict, unlike those in the 50 states,
not only prosecutes federal of-
fenses (including many of the na-
tion’s highest-profile cases) but
also performs the functions of a
local district attorney’s office,
GRAVES FROM B1
U.S. attorney: D.C. o∞ce’s workload is ‘unprecedented’
CRAIG HUDSON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Matthew M. Graves is the U.S. attorney for the District. His office, with about 350 lawyers, not only prosecutes federal offenses but also
performs the functions of a local district attorney’s office, prosecuting municipal cases involving murder, sex assault or drug dealing.BY JUSTIN JOUVENALVirginia’s new Republican At-
torney General blasted the state’s
liberal prosecutors on the cam-
paign trail, saying they weren’t
seeking stiff enough sentences
and were failing to charge cer-
tain crimes. Jason Miyares made
a bold promise: if they didn’t
enforce the law, he would.
The pitch was central to his
platform to approach the job as a
tough-on-crime “top cop,” but his
bid to expand the limited powers
of the attorney general’s office to
address violent offenses was
dealt a serious setback Monday.
A Senate committee con-
trolled by Democrats put an
indefinite hold on a bill that
would have allowed the attorney
general’s office to prosecute sex
assaults against children, mean-
ing the legislation is all but
certain to die this session.
The legislation was already a
scaled-back version of a bill that
would have given the office
broad powers to prosecute vio-
lent crimes. The defeat means
Miyares, who called himself the
“new sheriff in town,” won’t have
critical tools to tackle a top
priority — public safety — in the
way he had set out to do.
State Sen. Scott Surovell (D-
Fairfax) said in a statement he
felt the legislation went against
the wishes of voters who cast
ballots for prosecutors seeking to
refashion the criminal justice
system two years ago. They in-
clude residents in the trio of
bluer Northern Virginia jurisdic-
tions of Arlington, Fairfax and
Loudoun counties. Surovell vot-
ed to table the bill.
“In 2019, many Virginia locali-
ties chose a new direction in the
administration of prosecutorial
decisions and aren’t interested in
aspiring statewide officials in-
jecting themselves into these lo-
cal decisions to politicize pros-
ecutions,” Surovell said.
Under Virginia law, most vio-
lent offenses are handled by local
prosecutors, known as Common-
wealth’s attorneys.
The attorney general’s office
gives legal advice to state govern-
ment, handles appeals and pros-
ecutes a narrower band of crimi-
nal offenses such as child por-
nography, identity theft, comput-
er crimes and some gang
offenses.
Victoria LaCivita, a spokes-
woman for Miyares, said in a
statement the office was disap-
pointed by the outcome.
“Young sexual assault victims
deserve a backup plan to ensurejustice is served, and the attor-
ney general’s office will continue
to fight for and defend victims
whose voices are being ignored,”
LaCivita said.
Miyares promised to make
violent crime an overriding focus
during the November election.
He highlighted his experience as
state prosecutor in Virginia
Beach and said Virginia’s surging
homicide rate needed to be
brought under control.One of Miyares’s most fre-
quent targets were a wave of new
progressive prosecutors, who
had won office in recent years on
promises to reduce mass incar-
ceration and root out racial bias
in the criminal justice system.
Miyares said they were mak-
ing their communities less safe
by being too soft on crime.
Miyares was particularly critical
of Fairfax County Common-
wealth’s Attorney Steve Descano,often pointing to a judge’s sharp
criticism of the way Fairfax pros-
ecutors handled the case of a
young girl who suffered years of
sex abuse by a relative.
The judge told the girl in court
“your government has failed
you” after Descano’s office
agreed to a plea deal that sen-
tenced the abuser to 17 years in
prison.
Miyares said the sentence was
too light, but Descano said it was
stiffer than most and sufficient
for the purposes of public safety
given that the man was 53 years
old.
Miyares said the case was the
inspiration for a bill that would
have allowed his office to pros-
ecute violent crimes when asked
to by local police or sheriff’s
offices. But the bill drew blow-
back from local prosecutors,
some of whom saw it as a power
grab.
Miyares and his legislative
allies were forced to rewrite the
bill to be much narrower, only
addressing sex assault cases in-
volving children. But local pros-
ecutors remained skeptical of the
legislation.
Amanda Howie, a legislative
liaison with the Virginia Associa-
tion of Commonwealth’s Attor-
neys, said the bill did not providethe “needed partnership” be-
tween the attorney general’s of-
fice and local prosecutors.
Descano said in a statement it
was fitting the bill appeared
headed toward defeat.
“I’m glad the Senate saw this
bill for what it is,” Descano said.
“It’s unfortunate that Mr. Mi-
yares — the Commonwealth’s
self-professed ‘top cop’ — contin-
ues to lie about crime in jurisdic-
tions that reject his ideology.”
LaCivita said the attorney gen-
eral’s office will remain focused
on violent crime. She said the
office has supported Project
Ceasefire, an initiative to combat
gun violence, and pushed for two
pieces of legislation that address
human trafficking.
She said Miyares also support-
ed legislation to increase penal-
ties for drug dealers whose drugs
result in the deaths of users and a
bill that would require that local
prosecutors are notified when
someone accused of a violent
crime is released on bail.
In February, Miyares’s office
withdrew support from a bid by
two men to have their convic-
tions in the killing a police officer
overturned.
The move was supported by
Miyares’s Democratic predeces-
sor, Mark R. Herring.VIRGINIA
Bill aimed at expanding attorney general’s p owers on violent o≠enses is held
JULIA RENDLEMAN/THE WASHINGTON POST
Jason Miyares (R), Virginia’s new attorney general, promised to
make violent crime an overriding focus during his campaign.