Each week on The Newsfeed, host Paris Jackson and a team of veteran journalists dive deep into one topic and provide impactful reporting, interviews and community insights from sources you can trust. Each day this week, this post will be updated with a new story from the team.
By Venice Buhain, story published 3/16/2026
2026 marks five years since the Washington State Supreme Court ruled in State vs. Blake, known as the Blake Decision, which opened the door to the reversal of hundreds of thousands of drug convictions in the state. The decision had huge impacts on state drug policy, local courts and individual lives.
In 2016, an Eastern Washington woman named Shannon Bowman was arrested for felony drug possession after police found an almost empty bag of methamphetamine in her pocket. Bowman, charged under her former name of Shannon Blake, said a friend had given her the jeans and she didn’t know the drugs were in her pocket. Washington law at the time didn’t require proof that a defendant knowingly possessed drugs.
In 2021, the Washington Supreme Court sided with Bowman, saying that by making all drug possession illegal - even if the defendant didn’t know - the state law violated the due process clause of the state and federal constitution. The vote was 5 to 4 in Bowman’s favor, including retired Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu, who said the question comes down to the prosecution having the burden of proving criminal intent.
“The principle is that when you're charging somebody with a crime, you know you have to have a mens rea or state of mind, and that is criminal intent. You have to intend to commit this act. And this particular case, right, the facts were these drugs were in the little pocket of the jeans that had been given to her that actually were purchased at a secondhand store,” Yu said. “The burden should always be on the state to prove something, not the defense, to prove anything.”
The ruling overturned Washington’s felony drug law and set the stage for the possibility to clear hundreds of thousands of drug convictions dating back 50 years to 1971. Official state estimates vary on how many cases could be affected by the decision — anywhere between 330,000 to 600,000. However, it’s not automatic: people have to initiate the effort to get their charges cleared, so only between a quarter to a half of the cases — 155,000 of them — have been vacated since 2021.
In the five years since Blake, courts and justice organizations have been chipping away at the backlog. Yu said it should be a priority for the courts to clear these cases.
“You can be denied housing because of a conviction. You can be denied certain public assistance. You can be denied access to be a volunteer in your children's school, because they'll simply say somebody with a criminal felony record cannot volunteer here,” Yu said. “So the collateral consequences, or even the direct consequences of a conviction like this will follow somebody for a very long time.”
The ruling also led to a new drug law in 2023, known as the “Blake fix,” which made use or possession a gross misdemeanor, instead of a felony, and added the word “knowingly” to the statute. It also put a new emphasis on pre-trial diversion programs as an alternative to criminal charges.
Shannon Bowman told the Associated Press in 2021 that she was glad that people in her situation would have a second chance. She died in 2023.
Richard Lechich, of the Washington Appellate Project, represented Bowman in her appeal. The Blake case wasn’t the first that tried to challenge the felony drug possession law, but the facts of this case, a change in the Washington Supreme Court’s makeup and changes in attitudes around simple possession contributed to Blake’s successful appeal.
“At this point, Washington actually was the only state with a strict liability drug possession law in the books that made it a felony,” he said.
And this case made a strong argument that it was unfair and unconstitutional for a defendant to prove their innocence to be acquitted.
“I guess people always thought that was unfair, but maybe it gained some valiancy in recent years,” Lechich said.
“The best outcome we could have possibly gotten was for the court to declare the statute unconstitutional. It certainly had the broadest impact, and has given a lot of people a second chance,” he said.
Yu said five years later, there still seems to be a resistance to making sure that the court’s ruling is followed.
“But I'm surprised at some of the resistance. I'm surprised that the lack of funding to provide lawyers and those complicated cases. I'm surprised that some of our judges are saying, ‘Hey, I got a lot of stuff to do. And you know what, this is at the bottom of the list.’ And I keep thinking, why not put it to the top of the list and just get it done?,” Yu said.
“I didn't know what the world was going to be like.”
By Jaelynn Grisso, story published 3/20/2026
In 2021, Faraji Bhakti sat in prison, holding tightly to his yoga practice as a lifeline. He was not only locked up, but locked down in the midst of the pandemic, when he heard the news.
“I found the journal from February 14th, 2021. The first line in that journal is saying, I'm being forced to go to the hole for quarantine, for 14 days. I'm quite upset and I don't want to be here,” Bhakti said.
A few weeks later, the Washington Supreme Court overturned a drug possession law known as State v. Blake, leaving hundreds of thousands of drug convictions eligible to be cleared.
Months later, after his drug possession charge was vacated, Bhakti was released into the arms of his now adult kids – after 14 years.
“That experience of leaving when my children were six, seven and eight and now being able to return into their arms and they're 20, 21 and 22 was pretty a big contrast,” Bhakti said.
Bhakti left prison 3 years early due to his conviction being overturned. Currently, about 155,000 convictions have been vacated since the 2021 Blake Decision
Early efforts focused on those like Bhakti who would be resentenced. According to the Office of Public Defense, there’s no one left serving time for only felony drug possession. But the overall progress has been slow. Estimates vary, but only a quarter to half of the eligible charges have been vacated.
A few years in, the Washington Supreme Court created a taskforce to improve implementation. The Blake Administrative Vacate Unit was created as part of that to work with courts who request assistance to process paperwork on these cases. That’s helped to vacate thousands more convictions.
“Since the unit was created, we've worked with Edmonds Municipal Court, with Grays Harbor County District Court, with Whatcom County District Court, and we're in progress with Enumclaw Municipal Court, Grant County, Walla Walla [and more],” said Simon Wechsler, one of two attorneys for the Blake Administrative Vacate Unit. “There's also another 15 or 20 courts in our queue behind those. And in total, I think we've vacated something approaching 10 or 11,000 cases.”
Once these charges are vacated, many can get refunds for their court costs. But, it’s a complicated extra step, so only 6% of eligible people have received their refunds. A state official estimates the other 94% of people are owed about $33 million collectively. Bhakti is among those waiting for a refund. He estimates he could qualify for up to $10,000.
In the five years since he’s been out, Bhakti said he’s learned how to navigate a seemingly new world.
“I didn't know what the world was going to be like,” Bhakti said. “I didn't have any clothes or any things to reintegrate into, but I had my yoga practice and that's all I needed.”
He spends his time now teaching yoga to others, in community spaces and in prisons, including the one he was held in himself.
For Bhakti, he says Blake granted him and others relief, but it should only be the beginning.
“This law, in this change of the law, should not be the first and last law that changes in Washington state in order for folks to get relief for past crimes that they may have done when their brain wasn't even fully developed,” Bhakti said. “If I'm sitting in prison for something that I did when I was 17, 20, 24, and I'm 50 now, where does that give me room to evolve?”
Funding cuts slow progress on vacating charges
By Jaelynn Grisso, story published 3/17/2026
Work toward vacating all of the eligible convictions has ebbed and flowed in the 5 years since the decision, with many of the most pressing cases addressed in the first years. But systemic barriers and slashed funding have slowed progress.
“The Blake decision was a landmark decision both for our state and nationally,” said Maddisson Alexander, senior attorney at Civil Survival. “But what it didn't do was create ... a process to equip somebody with [the idea], ‘These are the steps I need to follow in order to get this relief.’ It didn't tell system actors that it was their responsibility. Instead, it kind of put the weight on those who had been impacted, those who had criminal convictions to try to figure out how to effectuate that relief.”
Additionally, each city and county handles Blake cases differently, creating a patchwork of systems to navigate through.
“The process to vacate a conviction is different in every single county, and some counties, you have to fight for that relief,” Alexander said. “In other counties, it's a little bit easier, and so it's nuanced. It's not clear-cut.”
Following the ruling in 2021, early efforts were focused on those who would be most affected by getting rid of the charge, especially people who only had a drug possession conviction. According to the Office of Public Defense, the majority of those folks had the conviction vacated within a year.
But a few years in, the process slowed significantly. As a response, the Supreme Court created a taskforce to figure out how to continue vacating cases. Alexander served on that taskforce.
The taskforce created guidance for local courts on handling Blake cases. It also created a team to administratively vacate cases without needing the person charged involved, which has found some success.
Alexander said that as Blake work was gaining momentum, a key source of funding was cut. The Office of Civil Legal Aid, which provides funds to organizations like Civil Survival, saw all of its Blake funding cut during the 2025 legislative session. Because the state operates on a biennium, that affects funding through the end of fiscal year 2027.
“We had this flood of people coming to us for support and for advocacy, and direct representation,” she said. “We went from being able to try to work with everybody on cases and add folks to our waitlist and really try to help people, to having to triage things. And seeing our community partners across the state also similarly turning away from Blake work.”
The Administrative Office of the Courts, which provides funds to cities and counties for Blake work, also saw a budget cut from $51 million in the last biennium to $6 million in this one. That leaves local courts and organizations like Civil Survival with few resources to continue doing this work.
“In some ways, the, you know, funding Blake work, may feel daunting, but it it shouldn't because we know where the cases are,” Alexander said. “This is a closed universe of relief for folks. We know where the cases are. We know how many there are, and we know that this work will end eventually. These folks in our community are entitled to this relief.”
Thousands are owed refunds, few have got them
By Lizz Giordano, story published 3/18/2026
A state official says Washington likely owes tens of millions of dollars to people who had their drug possession charges vacated, because so few of them have gone through the refund process for their court costs.
“A lot of folks just don't know that they paid anything. A lot of these cases are old. They are 2025, 30 years old,” said Chris Stanley, the chief financial officer for the Administrative Office of the Courts, which oversees the Blake Refund Bureau.
Once someone has their conviction vacated, they often also qualify for a reimbursement for what they paid in fees, fines and other court costs related to that charge.
“Maybe this is a conviction from 1994... they don't know what they paid, and they can't remember paying anything, so they just get their conviction vacated, and they're good,” Stanley said.
State data shows that about 94 percent of people who have a vacated charge and are owed refunds haven’t received any money. Stanley estimates these folks are owed about $33 million collectively.
Stanley says the average refund is about $1,200. Lawyers working to help get charged dismissed say this money can make a difference.
“Refunds on Blake-eligible convictions sometimes tend to be some of the most tangible relief my clients experience. It's like the difference of being able to buy Christmas presents for your child at Christmas to like, getting a car. This piece of money that doesn't by any means acknowledge all of the trauma and the harm and the loss as a result of that conviction. But it is something, and it's tangible.” said Maddisson Alexander, an attorney at Civil Survival.
There have only been about 6500 refunds issued in the last 5 years, compared to the hundreds of thousands of cases that could possibly be vacated under the Blake Decision.
Vacating convictions harder for people still incarcerated
By Jaelynn Grisso, story published 3/19/2026
While the Office of Public Defense says no one is currently incarcerated for only felony drug possession, there are still thousands serving time for other charges with vacatable convictions.
While the Department of Corrections said 2,179 incarcerated folks have had their drug charges vacated, nearly twice as many folks are still waiting. There are currently 4,331 individuals with eligible charges.
Getting those convictions cleared is especially difficult for those incarcerated, said Cody Nagle, attorney at Civil Survival. Nagle not only works to help others vacate their convictions, but she has also vacated her own convictions going back nearly a decade before she was an attorney.
“The biggest barrier that incarcerated clients have to getting this relief is access to the court system,” Nagle said. “They don't have a computer that they can file. They have to mail everything in. Everything that they want to present is handwritten, and they also don't have access to the processes and understanding how each jurisdiction wants these cases filed.”
Adding to those difficulties, each jurisdiction handles Blake cases differently. That’s lead to vastly different outcomes throughout the state.
Only six of the state’s 39 counties have vacated more than half of their eligible convictions, according to data from Washington State Patrol from July 2025. Those are Douglas, Skagit, Wahkiakum, Pend Oreille, King and Jefferson counties.
Most of the incarcerated folks still waiting to have their convictions vacated won’t have their sentence changed because of it. But Nagle said clearing those past charges still matters for their future.
"I see a lot in the news about we're just letting criminals go free, or we're just letting people get away with crimes that they knew they shouldn't commit. But I would argue that a lot of the people that were convicted of possessing drugs, before the statute was overturned, were suffering from substance use disorder or mental health issues,” Nagle said. “When somebody is able to have that removed from their record and no longer be criminalized for a disease or disorder that they're suffering from, it makes a really big impact.”
