Judge Dread?

In a remarkable development given the United Kingdom’s decidedly unfriendly policies toward cannabis, a 50-year-old Oxford man—who pleaded guilty to possessing hundreds of grams of pot and 135 plants—was spared jail time because the judge ruled he wasn’t a criminal.

Andrew Walters was arrested last April after police raided his home and found what they described in court as a “cannabis factory.” He was charged with cultivating a Class B drug—roughly the equivalent of a Class D felony in the U.S., and for Walters, his second offence.

But in a ruling with potentially far-reaching implications, Judge Patrick Eccles decided Walters had merely grown the 135 plants to use as medicine to treat his bad back—he could have sold the excess marijuana, but didn’t.

“You’re not by any standard definition a criminal, but the fact is you are somebody who had decided because of your own difficulties you were entitled to break the law on a significant scale by cultivating cannabis to provide medication for your own condition,” Eccles reportedly told Walters before handing him a suspended sentence.