In April 2017, Justice Lucy McCallum had to deal with an urgent out of hours application for the issue of a writ of habeas corpus. The petitioner apparently stubbornly refused/ignored her Honour’s “hints” that a bail application would be better received without the embellishment of insistence upon medieval modes of address or ill-informed incantation of God’s law and Magna Carta.
Nevertheless her Honour dealt with a number of arguments, including:
[9] 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.
[10] 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 any event, I took the view that the matters contended for by the petitioner would not afford a defence to an offence against ss 10 or 23(1)(c) of the Drug Misuse and Trafficking Act 1985 (NSW), which prohibits the possession of cannabis in a number of forms, regardless of its origin.
….
[25] Unsurprisingly, the petitioner concluded his submissions by citing Magna Carta (version not identified).
Being a Judge must be exasperating at times. It’s difficult to help people who can’t help themselves.
Creative commons acknowledgement for the photograph.
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