HOW POLICE MADE STONES DRUG CHARGES STICK

The police luridly played up the image of Marianne Faithfull as "a
girl" wearing nothing but a fur rug which she deliberately "let fall"
from time to time in their infamous 1967 drugs raid on the Rolling
Stones because they lacked any real evidence against Mick Jagger and
Keith Richards, recently released police and court records confirm.

The official files in the public record office and the West Sussex
county archives show how far the police were prepared to "fit up" the
Rolling Stones after their bungled drugs raid on a weekend house party
at Redlands, Richards' Sussex country home, on a tip-off from the News
of the World.

The case papers demonstrate that once the police realised they did not
have enough evidence to secure drugs convictions against the rock
stars, they set about putting the most lurid possible "spin" on the
scene they did encounter when 18 officers poured into the West
Wittering house in February 1967.

Police officers testified that they "noticed an unusual smell" which
"was not burning wood" and that they found Faithfull, who was referred
to only as Miss X at the trial, in a "merry mood'" sitting "on a settee
wrapped in a fur rug with several male persons" and that she "let it
fall from her shoulders from time to time".

The suggestion that her behaviour might be linked to smoking cannabis
was backed up by a Scotland Yard drug squad detective who was drafted
in to testify that the smell of joss sticks and incense was used by
cannabis smokers to hide the smell of the drug. "I know the smell of
cannabis. I liken the smell to burning hay and I would describe it as a
strong picric [acid] smell," Det Insp John Lynch testified.

It was enough to persuade Judge Leslie Block at the West Sussex
quarter session to sentence Keith Richards to 12 months in prison and
Mick Jagger to three months.

The sentences caused a national outcry and were portrayed as an
establishment attempt to crucify Britain's most insolent rock band.
Even the Times condemned the prison sentences in a leader that quoted
William Blake's Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel.

Eventually Lord Parker, the lord chief justice, quashed the jail
sentences saying no proper evidence of hashish smoking had been found
during the raid.