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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 reversing hundreds of thousands of felony drug convictions in the state.

The decision is still having huge impacts on Washington drug policy, local courts and individual lives -- aspects that Cascade PBS will explore this week.

In 2021, the Washington Supreme Court ruled on a case where a woman said she wasn't aware she had an almost empty bag of meth in her pocket.

Ret.

Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu was one of the five justices that ruled in favor of the woman named Shannon B. Blake.

YU: You have to intend to commit this act.

In this particular case, right, the facts were the drugs were in the little pocket of the jeans that had been given to her that actually were purchased at a secondhand store.

The burden should always be on the state to prove something, not a defense to prove anything.

The ruling overturned Washington's felony drug possession law, impacting hundreds of thousands of convictions dating back five decades to 1971.

Only between a quarter to a half of the cases have been vacated.

since 2021.

The ruling also led to a new statewide drug law It included the word knowing in the statute and put an emphasis on alternatives to drug charges.

Richard Lechich of the Washington Appellate Project was the lawyer who argued the case before the state Supreme Court.

LECHICH: 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.

I'm Paris Jackson.

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