Story by Venice Buhain, Jaelynn Grisso, and Lizz Giordano | Published by Cascade PBS
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.