Rosa Woods/Stuff
PhD student Jesse Kearse has won a Fulbright-EQC Scholarship to study in California. (File photo)
Years after receiving a cannabis conviction Jesse Kearse has moved on and hopes to go even further if his brush with the law doesn’t hold him back.
Kearse, now 30 and a PhD student, was awarded a Fulbright-EQC scholarship to study in California.
But so far the geoscientist does not have permission to enter the United States, with its strict approach to drug crimes.
However, he may be a step closer with a judge at the High Court in Wellington on Wednesday allowing an appeal against the outcome of the 2012 case, and granting him a discharge without conviction.
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In January 2012, aged 21, Kearse was convicted of having 12 grams of cannabis and fined $200. He co-operated with police and accepted responsibility immediately, Justice Rebecca Ellis said in the High Court.
She proceeded on the assumption the sentencing judge had not considered the possibility of a discharge without conviction, so she was prepared to consider the case afresh.
The consequences of a conviction were out of all proportion to the gravity of the offence, and she discharged him without conviction.
It might not help because she suspected the US…
