Uk : Supervision For Former Hertford Gamekeeper Who Grew His Own Canna Options

[bongme]

Hi

08 February 2010
FORMER gamekeeper Russell Seymour, who grew his own cannabis plants because he could not afford street prices, was placed under 6 months' supervision on Friday.

Seymour, 39, took the drug to relieve the pain he was suffering in his back and arm, St Albans crown court heard on Friday.

Prosecutor Charles Judge said the police could smell cannabis when they raided his home in Eagle Court, Hertford, on 20 July last year. He showed the officers a brown wooden box containing cannabis. In the garden there were two tubs also containing herbal cannabis.

When arrested he said: "It is all for my personal use for my back and arm. I cannot afford street prices." He said the pain-killers prescribed by his GP were not working.

In an interview he said the pain-killers were opiates that were causing him to suffer "personality changes" and said that taking cannabis was "the better of two evils."

Seymour appeared for sentence having pleaded guilty to cultivating cannabis at an earlier hearing.

Jeremy Lynn, defending, said Seymour had originally pleaded not guilty to the charge thinking that a jury might be persuaded that his complex medical condition would have given him a legal reason for growing cannabis. But he said he now accepted he was guilty of the offence.

He went on: "He was not in the position of being able to pay for cannabis and started growing it himself. He had no intention of growing it for anyone else. It was for his own use to relieve the pain. "

He said Seymour lived in "modest circumstances" and received £87 a week in benefits.

Judge Stephen Warner told him: "You have got to understand that it remains illegal to grow cannabis, sympathetic though I am to the difficulties of your medical condition." He passed a 6 month community order with supervision and told him to keep out of trouble.

Ear

Bongme

[sunshine band]

Jeremy Lynn, defending, said Seymour had originally pleaded not guilty to the charge thinking that a jury might be persuaded that his complex medical condition would have given him a legal reason for growing cannabis. But he said he now accepted he was guilty of the offence.

And I suppose his job was to make him realise that he was guilty - thank god for lawyers explaining that the court is no place to argue.

[Scouser]

Shame on them!

Jeremy Lynn, defending, said Seymour had originally pleaded not guilty to the charge thinking that a jury might be persuaded that his complex medical condition would have given him a legal reason for growing cannabis. But he said he now accepted he was guilty of the offence.

A little enlightenment on Juries if I may.

http://rs677.rapidshare.com/files/24147023...IAL_BY_JURY.pdf
Lysander Spooner - TRIAL BY JURY (circa 1900s I think)



A Jury has the power to nullify the law completely.


A superb book, the Chapter on the interpretation of the Magna Carta is amazing!


Let's see if the very first paragraph can entice you to read some more...

CHAPTER 1.

THE RIGHT OF JURIES TO JUDGE THE JUSTICE OF THE LAWS.

SECTION I

For more than six hundred years --- that is, since Magna Carta, in 1215 --- there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.

Not from the book, just a relevant quote

"Every jury in the land is tampered with and falsely instructed by the judge when it is told that it must accept as the law that which has been given to them or that they must bring in a certain verdict or that they can decide only on the facts of the case"

Lord Denman.

A typical Judge isn't going to tell a Jury all this, but there's nothing stopping you informing them.


Jury Nullification, research it!

[jimber]

If sympathetic couldn't the judge have just given a caution??, if he didn't want to stray to far from the norm... or is court already to far for that??

...sympathetic

This post has been edited by jimber: Feb 9 2010, 12:11 AM