Grass collaring judge is freed (8)
I believe the answer is:
redeemed
'is freed' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'grass collaring judge' is the wordplay.
'grass' becomes 'reed' (type of grass plant).
'collaring' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'judge' becomes 'deem' (I've seen this before).
'reed' placed around 'deem' is 'REDEEMED'.
(Other definitions for redeemed that I've seen before include "Recovered possession - paid back" , "Rescued, from hell or pawn" , "free from error" , "Thought about the possibilities again" , "exchanged tokens" .)