INDIANAPOLIS — Lawmakers in the Indiana General Assembly are at the halfway mark of this year's legislative session.
Tuesday, the Senate voted on and passed 30 bills now headed to lawmakers in the House.
One of those bills, Senate Bill 284, is catching the attention of Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears who said he feels like he’s the intended target of the proposed legislation because of a policy he announced in 2019 about marijuana possession.
That’s when Mears announced his office would not prosecute marijuana possession cases involving less than 30 grams.
“Our priority is violent crime and we’re not going mess around with these small marijuana cases,” Mearns said three years ago.
Even so, Mears said, his office currently has 150 pending cases involving a marijuana possession charge.
“It has to meet very specific criteria, but if it does, we’re more than happy to prosecute those cases if it advances justice in Marion County,” Mears said Wednesday.
This year, lawmakers in the House heard a proposed bill that would have decriminalized possession of marijuana for the same amount Mears has said he won’t prosecute.
That bill never made it out of committee.
When it comes to the big picture in Marion County, going after people for having small amounts of marijuana is not a top priority for Mears.
“We need to be putting our best prosecutors and putting a ton of effort into our homicide cases, into our sex crime cases and that’s where those resources are going,” Mears explained.
Senate Bill 284 could impact that policy.
Supporters of the bill say it’s a way to deal with prosecutors who refuse to enforce a law.
“We should not have folks making blanket policies outside of the laws that we pass. They should enforce the laws that we pass,” said Sen. Michael Crider, R-District 28, during Tuesday’s debate on the Senate floor before the bill passed by a vote of 40-9.
The proposed legislation would appoint a special prosecutor in cases where a prosecutor refuses to enforce a law. It also establishes a review board made up of three prosecutors to investigate such allegations.
According to the bill, the board could only have two members from the same political party and each member would have to have 12 years of experience as a prosecutor.
“My hope is no prosecutor can claim this is unfair or unreasonable,” Sen. Aaron Freeman, R-District 32, told lawmakers Tuesday before they voted. “It’s very calculated to get at a non-compliant prosecutor and give a method to prosecute those crimes that are on the books.”
“As I warned colleagues as they go down this path of voting in favor of this bill, one day it might be your prosecutor who gets charged,” said Sen. Greg Taylor, D-District 33, which covers Marion County.
“The impact of this is going to extend far beyond Marion County and far beyond when I’m no longer a prosecutor,” Mears said of the proposed law.
Sen. Mike Young, R-District 35, who voted in favor of SB 284, told lawmakers Tuesday that Mears was not the target and that he’d been working on a similar measure while former Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry was in office.
“There was a convergence in the United States of socially liberal prosecutors not prosecuting and I wanted to make sure it didn’t come to Indiana,” Young said.
From where Mears sits, after recently winning the prosecutor’s race in November, he sees the proposed law quite differently.
“They can rationalize it all they want, but I think the reality is the protections you see with three prosecutors serving on a panel and going before a judge is designed to protect the good ol' boy network to try and make sure the status quo is maintained,” Mears said. “When you take a position like we have that upsets the status quo, you’re going to draw attention from the Indiana legislature and other people who want to fight against progress.”
Mears said he would challenge SB 284 in court if it became a law.
“Our power comes from the constitution, not statute,” Mears said. “Now they’re trying to take a statute to carve away a prosecutor’s ability and authority to prosecute cases in the jurisdiction in which they’ve been duly elected."