Wash this Weed

© The Cairns Post, discovered through Legal Juice and John Mesirow's blog-------for your reading pleasure:

A PROMISING environmental scientist who forgot that he had stashed a 650g bag of cannabis in a washing machine has been let off without a conviction for the offence.

Isha James Segboer, 34, was planning to bake a cake from the cannabis.

Instead he put it in a disused washing machine and forgot about it.

In Cairns Supreme Court yesterday, hewas ordered to serve 100 hours of community service.
But Supreme Chief Justice Paul de Jersey took the unusual step of not recording a conviction, despite two previous drug offences, because he did not want to ruin the high-achieving environmental scientist’s career potential to help others.

"What influences me in the end is the unusual feature of your presenting as a well-educated person with a capacity to contribute substantially to society in your potential area of qualification," Chief Justice de Jersey said.

Segboer’s lawyer Bebe Mellick said Segboer had been given the shopping bag of drugs by an associate and had intended to bake a cake out of it because of its poor quality, but had forgotten about it.

Look forward to blogging again, what with my newspaper now up and running regularly at http://www.southfloridagaynews.com/. This week we even have a feature on the Miami Beach decriminalization ordinance proposal recently launched:

http://www.southfloridagaynews.com/news/local-news/1647-new-initiative-to-decriminalize-marijuana-announced-in-miami-beach.html