I don’t pretend to know a lot about the law, but even I, a humble idiot, can spot some flaws in the logic of this particular would-be legal eagle.
According to a decision published on Caselaw.nsw.gov.au, a bloke called Adrian Ashley of the House of Cooper is currently in jail because he didn’t show up to a court date after being charged with cannabis possession.
He ascertained the services of another bloke called Keith Charles of the House of Haffey to petition for his release. Their argument as to why Ashley should be released is as follows: a) he’d been wrongfully imprisoned; b) he is a self-governing man not subject to Australian laws; and c) God gave him the weed.
Take a moment to compose yourself if you’d like, because there is a lot going on here.
The published judgement is a masterpiece of shade on behalf of the judge, and I encourage you to read all of it, but here are some of the choicest parts:
“The petitioner objected when I addressed him as ‘Mr Charles’, asserting that ‘Mister’ is a military title and that he is not in the military. Without acceding to the correctness of that contention, I will refer to him (as a matter of respect) as the petitioner. The petitioner indicated that Adrian Ashley also objects to the title ‘Mister’ on the same basis. I will refer to Adrian Ashley as the applicant.”
“The petitioner informed me that he is not a legal practitioner and is not legally trained.”“As best I was able to ascertain from the information provided, the application was based on a number of grounds. I will address those grounds in the order I consider logical rather than the order in which they were presented in the material relied upon by the petitioner.“First, it was suggested that the applicant was arrested for conduct which is incapable of amounting to an offence. The petitioner explained that the applicant was charged after being found in possession of cannabis. The petitioner contended that all plants were given to man by God, citing Genesis 1:29 of the King James Version Bible 1611, which states:And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”
“The point might have been made in response to the petitioner’s submission that, according to those words, if it is God who supplies cannabis to man, it is for nutritional rather than recreational purposes.”“In order to make sense of the petitioner’s statement, it is necessary to understand that he adopts the curious practice of referring to himself variously in the third person singular, as ‘One’, and in the first person plural, as ‘We’.”“Any such application is likely to be better received without the embellishment of insistence upon medieval modes of address or ill-informed incantation of God’s law and Magna Carta.”
And especially this bit of the catchwords section:
I dunno what kind of LARP-inducing, Westeros-grown kush these two olde mates have been smoking, but if it results in more petitions for release on the basis of, like, being my own man, you can’t judge me, anyway if God didn’t want us to smoke the ganj he wouldn’t have put it on this good green earth – then they’ve got my blessing.
Source: Caselaw NSW.
Image: Fox.
